


From Chin To Yon Rah

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Death, F/M, Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Journey, Original Character(s), Redemption, Romance, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Sokkla Saturday, a touch of humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 43,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27559141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: After many years, Azula comes home from the Earth Kingdom.
Relationships: Azula/OC (Avatar), Azula/Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 111
Kudos: 160





	1. To Know Love

**Author's Note:**

> Sokkla Saturday: Reuniting After A Long Time
> 
> This is a fic that I can see having multiple parts if I get around to it.

The woman who stumbles in isn’t the girl who had ran away so many years ago. The first thing he notices is that she is rougher, more rugged. Her face and clothing are dusted with dirt and her hands are calloused. Her dirtied skin is lightly sunburned and her cheeks are flushed with burn. It is plain to see without the makeup that she used to wear. And then there’s her hair. Her hair that had always been so important to her. Her hair, cut to just below her chin, is wind blown. 

He doesn’t need to talk to her to know that she has changed.

She is smaller than he remembers, but he thinks that this is a trick of so much time having gone by. Or that he had watched Toph and Aang grow taller. The former princess is still so tiny. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed before. 

Her eyes are also softer, possibly kinder. But they are sad, he thinks that she hasn’t smiled in a very long time. He thinks that she might have forgotten how and he has an impulse to try to make her remember. 

He doesn’t get the chance. She takes one more staggering step before pitching over. He catches her before she can reach the floor. She is limp in his arms and for a moment he struggles to get a solid hold on her. When he finally does, he scoops her into his arms and carries her into the throne chamber. 

“Zuko, guess who’s home!” He declares.

He sees Zuko swallow, likely his mouth runs dry. He knows that he recognizes her. Despite it all, he recognizes her.

She doesn’t wake for quite some time, Sokka thinks that she has had a long journey physically and emotionally. It will probably be nice to wake up to plush pillows in her own bed. Or maybe it will be jarring and intimidating, melancholy in a way that only nostalgia can be. 

Zuko brushes a few strands of hair out of her face. Up close and without makeup he realizes that her face is speckled with freckles. He thinks that some of them are new, the product of her sunburns. He also notices scarring, a few thin lines like slashes from a razor or from running through a forest of pine. His stomach aches when he sees the one on her neck. Someone had tried to kill her. He has an urge to trace his finger along the gash. For a moment he hovers his fingers above it. Zuko takes him by the wrist, but it is too late, he thinks that she has probably sensed him. 

She stirs and for a moment he thinks that she is going to roll over and go back to sleep with a groggy murmur. He gets that soft, sleepy mumble but her eyes open and they stay open. 

He thinks that she will ask where she is. This doesn’t happen either, “I’m thirsty, Zuko.” 

Zuko nods, “tea or water?”

“It doesn’t matter, I just want a drink.” 

“I’ll have them bring a snack for you too.” 

Azula nods and sits herself up. Shorter locks tumble messily into her face. Impulsive, Sokka pushes them back for her. 

“Don’t touch me.” It isn’t snappy or harsh. More like a plain and simple request. 

“Sorry.” He mutters. The silence that falls isn’t comfortable so he fills it, “so...where have you been?” 

“It is probably easier to tell you where I haven’t been.”

“You’ve been in the Earth Kingdom!” He guesses.

“Yes, for a while.”

“A long while.” He notes. “I can tell.”

“How?”

“Your accent.”

“I don’t have…”

“You do!” He insists. 

Her face flushes lightly. “My dad said the same thing to me when I came home from the Fire Nation. He said that you pick up on how they talk and…” he trails off, feeling as though he is being too enthusiastic. She doesn’t seem too thrilled at the notion of losing touch with her Fire Nation roots. “It’s a good thing!” He tries. “I mean I like it.” She shifts and he knows that he is only making her feel more awkward. “Nevermind. How long have you been back home?” 

“However long I’ve been asleep.” 

“I mean, when did you get back to the Fire Nation?” 

She thinks for a moment. “A few weeks ago. I had enough coin to buy myself a trip from Chin Village to Yon Rha’s Village. I walked the rest of the way.”

“That explains why your shoes are so worn.”

She nods. 

“What were you doing in the Earth Kingdom?”

She shrugs. “I guess that I just wanted to find somewhere quiet to stay.”

“Did you?”

She nods again.

“Did you like it there?”

Another nod.

“Then why did you leave?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You answered them all.” He points out. 

She shrugs and lays back down. 

“Does it have to do with that?” He points to her neck. She pulls the blanket up to cover it. “It does, doesn’t it?” She rolls to face away from him. “Okay, fine. Different topic. Where did you live? Did you make any friends?”

“Why do you care what happened to me?”

“I don’t know, I guess because it’s been so long and we thought that you...you know…”

“Died.” 

He rubs the back of his head, “yeah.”

“And that would be preferable, yes?”

“No!” He answers right away. “I think that it would have been kind of sad if you did.”

“It wouldn’t have been all the tear jerking.” She replies quietly. “I think that I have more waiting for me in the Spirit World than I do here.”

At first he thinks that she is speaking of honor and pride, of ending herself to prevent further disgrace. But her word choice, she always chooses her words carefully… “you lost someone, didn’t you?”

She gives no answer and that is answer enough.

“Sorry.” He mumbles as more dots connect in his mind. She found someone, maybe several someones that she cared for. She wasn’t planning on coming home until her newfound peace was stolen. He looks at her neck, at that thin white line. She had tried to save them but lost them or that one person all the same. And she fled. Fled back home from one place of dreadful memories to a place of older wounds. 

“Well, it’s good to have you back.”

“Is it?” She asks. 

He looks into her eyes. Sad, soft, kind...she had loved someone. She knows what it is to love and be loved. He takes her hand and offers her a gentle smile. “I think so.”


	2. A Breeze Through The Tall Grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned it in the comments, but this is one of three fics I'm going to be kind of test running for a bit until I decide which one to focus on.

_ The plains are a lot vaster than she remembers, it might be because she had first traversed them via a sturdy tank. With nothing but a mongoose-lizard for company and transport, it is a little different. More daunting. And this time she doesn’t have a sense of direction. She has stolen herself enough coin from the palace to get her by for at least a year, should nothing happen. So long as she buys clothes only when she needs them and plans her meals as precisely as she plans her conquests she should be fine.  _

_ Should be.  _

_ She is never fine these days.  _

_ She can’t use her coins to buy back the luck she has run out of. _

_ If there is one thing that is a mercy, it is that Earth Kingdom afternoods aren’t so swelteringly brutal as Fire Nation ones. She is accustomed to the intense heat and can largely ignore the unabated sunlight that spills over her. It is the night that she fears for. It is always cold and this, she is not used to. _

_ She has already spent several nights woefully unprepared and shivering. Laying under her mongoose-lizard with a terribly thin blanket only goes so far. The sun is on its way down and she still only sees an endlessly sweeping plain. She doesn’t want to spend the night out in the cold. She isn’t sure that she will be able to endure another.  _

_ But she will have to. She knows it when the sky turns from a blazing--yet dull by comparison to a Fire Nation sky--orange-red to a thick indigo and the first pinprick of stars burst into view. She knows it well when a sliver of a moon climbs into the sky.  _

_ She makes herself a fire and longs for something to cook over it. She has run out of berries and nuts, and that which she hadn’t run out of had gone slushy and moldy. She hasn’t come by anything to hunt either, not even small game.  _

_ Three days so far, without food. She is thankful that she had the forethought to travel by the stream. And she berates herself for not thinking of trying to catch fish. It will be difficult by hand and dagger alone--she makes a mental note to craft herself some tools when she comes by time, energy, and supply--and she doesn’t like seafood but the ache in her belly tells her that she can’t afford to be choosey.  _

_ She takes a sip from her waterskin and stares off into the sky. She likes the sky, it is her one comfort. For a while it takes her away from the biting cold and it makes her feel somehow less lonely. Truth be told, she isn’t sure exactly why that is. She stares at the shimmering expanse until it becomes a shifting mirage.  _

_ This is when the coyote-fox begin to yip and yap. They will do so unceasingly into the night. She quickly lets her fire die. The night chill fills its vacancy with an overzealous readiness. Even with the fire out, she wonders if the coyote-fox will sniff her out.  _

_ Some suppressed and dismal part of her hopes that they will; nobody would miss her. Nobody would find her.  _

_ She closes her eyes.  _

_ And she awakes before the morning breaks. The sky is that same inky indigo as it was before but to the east there is a streak of gold on the horizon. It is a breezy day, she knows it not only buy the way her hair whips at her face, but at the sound of the grass swaying. She gets up on shaky legs and drags herself onto her mount. Fatigue has her nodding off several times. She is fully awake when she slumps and falls to the grass. Newly bruised she carries on.  _

_ An hour or so passes and then another and the wind is growing incessant, the way that it whips her hair. She climbs down from her mount and takes a deep breath. She isn’t sure if her hands are shaking with hunger or anticipation. Either which way, she takes the blade to her locks and watches strand after strand drift away in the breeze like the bison fur she had followed through this meadow some years ago.  _

_ It is pathetic really, but she falls to her knees and cries.  _

_ She can’t deny that the ravaging of her hair was well overdue.  _

_ It is midafternoon when she makes it up the hill. And for a moment hunger subsides and the oppressive sorrow that has been following her for hours, perhaps days, dulls. The land is gorgeous. Calf high, the ankles and wild flowers swish around her. She can see for miles, a steady sea of grass, undulating like waving hands. In rays of the sun she sees plumes of teeny insects flitting about.  _

_ For a moment she thinks that she will be okay.  _

_ The moment passes when she fails to catch a fish.  _

_ Four days without food.  _

_ On the fifth day she begins to unravel.  _

_ She feels weak and tired. For the first time she considers that she has made a mistake in trying to take on such a great grassland. It devastated her psyche too. More than she had anticipated.  _

_ The whispers begin, she hears them in the rustle of the grasses. They tell her that she isn’t alone, that they are here. That she can talk to them. Some are familiar, most are just unrecognizable whispers born of a need much more pressing than food... _

_ On this day she learns that she can’t be and doesn’t like to be alone. _

**.oOo.**

Azula rolls over and pushes herself deeply into the mattress. It is so cozy. She isn’t particularly ready to leave its comforts yet. A pang of nervousness has her bolting up right, she has to get a start and find food or…

She looks around and inhales deeply as she rubs her hands over her face. She lays herself back down. It will be there when she is ready to come and get it, she reminds herself. This is disorienting. Even more so is when her food comes to her instead of she to it. The serving girl sets it on her nightstand with a soft smile and an, “enjoy, princess.”

Azula sits up once more. She is only a few bites in when Sokka enters. “How are you feeling?” 

Azula thinks for a moment before ultimately shrugging. 

“It’s good to be home isn’t it? Or is it just weird?”

“It’s weird to be consistently bombarded with questions.”

Sokka flushes. “Just trying to be friendly!” He stumbles. 

Azula feels faintly jittery, recalling that he isn’t accustomed to her yet. Not like they were. He can’t interpret her like they had been able to. “That’s fine.”

Sokka furrows his brows, “uh...I’m glad that I have your permission to be friendly?” 

The fluttering in her tummy grows. She probably should say something else but she doesn’t. She isn’t sure how. Like many conversations these days, there is no tactical approach and if she tries to approach it with stern mannerisms and carefully planned dialogue it is just uncanny. 

“You’re not easy to have conversations with, you know?” Even his statements are questions, she almost laughs. “It’s hard to talk to someone who doesn’t talk.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?” 

“I...I don’t know. I guess it’s because…” he trails off. She catches him staring at her neck. So it’s a pity thing. She pulls her collar up. “You’ve probably been alone for a while right?”

“I have, yes.” She replies. “But why does that matter to you?” 

“It just does. Does there have to be a reason?”

“Yes.” Azula gives a firm nod. “There is a reason and a motive behind everything. I would like to know yours.” 

“Because I think that you could use a friend.”

“But why do  _ you  _ want to be that friend. The last time we spoke we were throwing fire and boomerangs.” 

He chuckled. “There was a point where the last time Zuko and I spoke, it was the same thing…” he trails off. 

“That doesn’t answer why you care. Where’s the logic…”

“Ah ha!” He exclaims as though he has backed her into a corner. “This isn’t about logic, Azula. It’s about emotion. Ya know, feelings.” 

Azula scowls. “I don’t like those.” 

He laughs. And then his laughter fades. “Sometimes I just like helping other people. It makes me feel good. Ya know?”

She presses her lips into a thin line. Even if only vaguely, she thinks that she does. She looks at her stachel and thinks of the small straw-stuffed badger-mole within. And she thinks that she does know, at least to some degree. “I do not.” She says anyhow. 

Again his eyes wander to her neck. “I think that you do. Come on, finish up,” he gestures to her food, “and I can show you some new stuff that has been added to the palace while you were gone.” 


	3. Being Bora

_ She goes by many monikers. In this town she will be Bora. At the last one she was Yukia and the one before that it was Yukia but spelled without the ‘Y’. In the next town she will be Zu-Ri. Her stomach is achy and rumbling by the time she sees its shambled skyline and she dreads that she has only come upon a ghost town. She isn’t even there yet and she is already crying tears of frustration. She doesn’t have much energy left, if this is a dead end, she will simply find herself a house to curl up and die in. She will try to find a nicer looking one so that the dust coating her bones will have an aesthetic that is darkly pleasing to behold; a princess dying without a name in the husk of a nameless town that had been abandoned long before she’d come. _

_ Her mongoose-lizard is growing weaker too. It moves more sluggishly and she considers that she may not even make it into town. That her bones will lay in a field. Granted, there is poetry in that too; the thought of floral vines curling around her ribcage and fire lilies blossoming from her mouth and eye sockets--life in death. And in death she’d give more life than she had when she was alive.  _

_ She can no longer keep her head up. She is weak and thirsty. It is now up to her mount to get her to town. She closes her eyes. She supposes that death isn’t so terrible after all now that it is coming to whisk her away. _

_ Azula doesn’t think that she will wake up, but when she does it is to a cool rag on her head and the smell of chowder. She doesn’t much like chowder, but Agni does it smell heavenly now. She can taste it on her tongue and the taste is warm and inviting. There is another smell in the air, she thinks that it might be bread. She isn’t sure that she has a reason to, but she smiles.  _

_ “I was worried that ya weren’t gonna wake up.” Remarks a gruff voice.  _

_ Azula sits up, her head pounds lightly but the ache in her stomach is easing up. She is inclined to guess that the man had fed her at least a little. A dizziness clouds her head and it must show on her face because the man moves to hold her steady and the lower her back onto the pillow.  _

_ “Easy now.”  _

_ She tries to keep her eyes open but finds herself drifting off again. It doesn’t feel as though much time has passed but when she comes to for a second time, the sun filters through the cracked window from a different angle. The man is still sitting there, he has a fire in the center of the room, she smells more soup.  _

_ He doesn’t notice her sit up this time. It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t feel quite so dizzy, though her stomach is rumbling again. A quick once over is all that she needs to know that she has, in fact, found a ghost town. She is sheltered in the hollowed guts of a house, chunks of plaster and stone litter the floor amid dust and dirt and teenier fragments of the wall and collapsing ceiling. There are a few pieces of furniture in the room; a chair that is missing a leg, a cracked mirror, and a discolored and dirty sofa with the stuffing weeping from a hole that has probably been created by chipmunk-mice.  _

_ The man glances over his shoulder. He is much older than she, at least her father’s age, and sports a rugged beard and scraggly hair. He offers her a smile. “I hope that ya don’t mind chowder, it’s all that I know how to cook well.”  _

_ “That’s fine.” She replies. Evidently she is willing to eat damn near anything at this point. “Where’s my mongoose-lizard?” _

_ He jabs his thumb towards the window. “Have ‘im tied up out there. Ya can bring ‘im in if ya want.” _

_ She shakes her head, “he’ll be fine out there, I can’t imagine that many people pass through here.” _

_ “Yer the first I’ve seen.” He hands her a bowl of chowder. “I only have one bowl, but I’ll let ya use it first.” _

_ She nods again and cups her hands around it. It is pleasantly hot on her hand and it smells divine. As divine as fish can smell. She supposes that the vegetable touch makes it more bearable. It doesn’t taste as unappetizing as she had anticipated. _

_ “Where are ya headed?”  _

_ She shrugs as she takes another bite. She eats faster than she probably should, at an impolite, rather greedy pace. The sort that her father would have chastised her for. This man seems faintly humored, delighted even. “Good, right? My wife taught me how to make it!”  _

_ “I don’t usually eat fish. I don’t like fish.” She takes another bite. “So if I can actually tolerate it, it must be well made.” She clarifies.  _

_ He chuckles. “Good to know.”  _

_ She hands him the emptied bowl.  _

_ “Feeling better now.”  _

_ “Quite.”  _

_ “Yer Fire Nation nobility aren’t ya?” _

_ “What makes you say that?” _

_ “Ya talk like one’a the educated folk. I also ain’t hear no Earth Kingdom folk with that kin’a accent.” _

_ “And it doesn’t bother you. To talk with a Fire National?” _

_ “War’s been over for a few years now. Yer kin’s as good as my kin.” _

_ She thinks, fleetingly that her kin is better than his. Superior. She keeps that much to herself. She is, afterall, on the same level as he. At least for the time being. She ought not be. She ought to be in the palace getting pampered. Again she wonders what has compelled her to flee so far from home. She can only chalk it up to the throes of insanity.  _

_ No. That isn’t it at all.  _

_ It was a moment of clarity.  _

_ She can’t yet bring herself to admit it, but she needs to change. If not she, than something in her life needs to change. And this propels her here.  _

_ “Why are you here all alone?” She inquires. _

_ He chuckles again, “I believe I asked you first.”  _

_ She gives an indignant snort, “I’m not headed anywhere at all…” She trails off.  _

_ “Hmm…” _

_ She pulls her legs up to her chest and listens to the crackle of the fire. “Can I accompany you for a while?”  _

_ He mulls it over. “These plains are mighty lonely.” He agrees. “How’s this? Ya let me ride on the mongoose-lizard and I’ll help you replenish your food supply.” _

_ It sounds well enough to her. “We’ll spend the night here and depart at sunrise.” _

_ “Ya cold?” _

_ “A little, yes.”  _

_ He shuffles around in his pack, pulls out a blanket, and hands it to her. “I just washed it in the river earlier taday.” _

_ On this night she learns what it means to be generous. _

**.oOo.**

When she tries to stand, she finds that it is difficult. She is still so sapped and spent. She takes one step and nearly topples. Sokka catches her and leads her back to the bed. She curls herself up under the covers and closes her eyes. If nothing else she can savor the plushness of the mattress and the fluffiness of the pillows. It is nice to get reacquainted with luxury even if it is somewhat disorienting. 

She snuggles her cheek against the silk bed sheets and yawns.

“I take it, that you’d rather get a tour some other time?” Sokka asks. 

“Yes, another time.” Azula replies. “I don’t feel well.” 

“You look a little pale under that sunburn.” 

She is too tired to muster up a sardonic response. 

“Should I get one of the doctors?”

Azula shakes her head. “I just need more rest, I think.” 

“Do you want me to stay or am I just annoying?”

“Yes.” 

“Yes I’m annoying or yes I can stay?”

“Yer annoying but you can stay.” 

He laughs.

“Yer supposed to be offended.”

“I’m not laughing at that.” Sokka gives a goofy grin.

“What then?”

“Nothing.” He wipes a tear from his eye. “ _ yer _ just different is all.”

She rolls away from him, a tinge of pink spreading over her cheeks. “I can still do unspeakably horrible things to you, peasant.” She warns.

“You won’t though.”

“How do you know?”

“I can just tell.” He shrugs. “Can you tell me about it? About your travels; I have a feeling that you’ve got some good stories.” 

She shakes her head. “I’m going to try to sleep, Sokka.” 

“Alright, well I’ll tell you a few stories!”

Azula groans. She thinks that this might only serve to encourage him. Bothersome it may be, but she can’t help but feel comforted. Once again, she isn’t alone anymore. 


	4. Surrounded By Splendor

_ It is only after they part ways that Azula realizes she hadn’t gotten his name. And she thinks about that for a long time afterwards. It is a stupid thing to have nagging her in the back of her mind. A trivial matter. He was a friendly face and a good companion but she didn’t know him all too well.  _

_ They’d spent a good week or so together. He helped her craft some tools like a good fishing spear and a bow and some arrows for hunting. She has an abundance of blankets so she traded one for a pan to cook her fish and game over.  _

_ They had talked a good deal, nothing of where she is headed or where she had come from. She didn’t have to drop a false name because he didn’t ask for one at all. There had been an unspoken courtesy, a knowing that she didn’t want to be known. So he settled for talking of his wife and of folklore that he’d heard during his travels.  _

_ She warned him of a rather troublesome group of bandits just to the south of where she had been before she’d entered the plains.  _

_ Azula steers her mongoose-lizard towards the skyline. She can see the outlines of buildings through a thin veil of mist. She hopes to be there before the clouds open up and soak her to the bone.  _

_ The man had told her a tale about how he and his wife had been in a thick forest huddling in a cave as they waited out a storm. He claimed that they met a spirit there; one that looked like a rabaroo but spoke like a child. They followed it out into the storm and it led them to a babe. They had taken the babe in and that, that was why he was on this journey. To trade furs and other goods for coin. He promised his wife that he’d have them plenty of food by the time he got back and toys too.  _

_ The village is in unobscured view now. And so her nervousness unveils itself too. There is always a pinch of nervousness when entering a new town; the smaller it is, the greater her sense of foreboding.  _

_ She is more elusive in the bigger towns. In the smaller villages they want to get to know her.  _

_ She is almost certain that there is another larger town some miles away but she is just as certain that she won’t beat the storm. As though to diminish any figment of doubt, she spies the first fork of lightning stab into the cloud diagonal from it. She urges her mongoose-lizard to move faster. She reaches the village as the first drop of rain spatters on her cheek. The streets are desolate save for a vendor who had been late to pack in. The woman’s hair whips into her face. A face screwed up in distress and concentration.  _

_ The wind is certainly picking up, it blows a few more fat droplets into Azula’s face. She hears the woman cry out as she fumbles with the protective tarp and it flies from her hand.  _

_ The sky opens up with a fury and Azula chides herself for pausing to gawk. The woman takes notice of her and she inwardly berates herself a second time. And then a third as she steers her mongoose-lizard towards the woman. She slides down from her mount and grabs the other end of the tarp. The woman grunts at the effort of securing it.  _

_ “Why did you wait so long to close your stall?” Azula questions over the storm.  _

_ “Why didn’t you plan your travels better?” She shoots back.  _

_ “I noticed the storm miles back. I can only get my mongoose-lizard to run so fast.” She swats at the wet strands of hair that plaster to her forehead and finds herself relieved that she had chosen to chop it short. The other woman doesn’t have such luck, her hair is flapping into her eyes and sticking to her bare shoulders.  _

_ “Thank you for helping me.” _

_ “I was hoping that you could give me a place to wait out the storm.”  _

_ The woman rolls her eyes. “So you’re that sort.” _

_ “That sort?” Azula asks. She wishes that the woman would have this discussion with her inside.  _

_ “You do things for things.” _

_ “Well yes, that’s how it works.” _

_ “Have you ever done anything helpful just to be generous?”  _

_ She thinks for a moment. A moment that turns into a minute and then a span of time long enough for the woman to say, “I didn’t think so.”  _

_ Azula frowns. “Fine.” She climbs back to her saddle, there is a decent puddle in it. It doesn’t matter she is drenched down to her last layer of clothing and then some.  _

_ “Wait. I didn’t mean anything by that.” The woman calls up to her. “You can stay with me if you want.”  _

_ But she is agitated already, perhaps wrongly so, and can’t imagine spending another moment with the woman. She gives the mongoose-lizard’s reins a flick and ventures into the storm. And really, what does it matter? Her sense of urgency has been washed away by having already failed to keep herself dry.  _

_ Thunder shakes the cobblestone, she hears a tree branch split. She thanks the spirits that she can bend lightning and has watched Zuko redirect it enough to have a sense of how it’s done.  _

_ She finds herself an alley to steal away in.  _

_ The storm lets up as suddenly as it had come, tapering off with a few final patters. It had raged for a respectable ten minutes, but such a powerful burst can never seem to sustain itself. The village inhabitants are slower to emerge. She wonders if she is due for a second onslaught; she finds that storms like these usually come in pairs or several short sets. _

_ She emerges from the alley dripping and shivering. Her mongoose-lizard looks just as miserable.  _

_ The streets don’t fill until the sun has been in the sky for at least an hour. And even an hour later, she is still sopping wet and dripping as though she herself is a raincloud. Her mood goes darker still.  _

_ Now, with a crowd, her nerves are flaring again. As wet as she is, she is twice as likely to draw attention. She will draw it thrice over being an outsider who is unmistakably Fire Nation.  _

_ She clenches the reigns much tighter than she needs to and guides her mount through the crowd. She watches three children, two boys and a girl kicking up puddles and giggling. An older child floats a paper boat down the stream of the sidewalk gutter. The children pay her passing by no mind. That is one constant from town to town; the children are always oblivious. At least until the adults make a fuss, then they get curious. She doesn’t like children, when they do take an interest in her they ask far too many questions and with all the social grace of a village drunk.  _

_ She scans the buildings for an inn. She will stay here for some time, earn herself some more coin, and be on her way. She resigns herself to the possibility that she might have to bypass the inn and sleep in the village green if she wishes to keep her earnings.  _

_ She might have to do so regardless, this village is so small that it may not have an inn at all. _

_ As she ganders at street signs and buildings, she feels eyes on her. Most are drawn out passing glances, some linger long enough to send a vibration up and down her spine. A very particular set of eyes refuse to leave her.  _

_ “Missus, you’re all wet!” _

_ “So I am aware.” She answers dryly. _

_ “I have hair too.” He beams up at her, one of his front teeth is missing. “See!” He points at his hair.  _

_ “That isn’t what I said.” She grumbles.  _

_ “I also have teeth, missus. But not all of them! Do you have all of your teeth?” _

_ Azula blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?” _

_ “Because sometimes, for some reason your tooth gets all wiggly and then it falls out. My dad says not to yank it out. Or if you’re like my friend’s brother’s dad...” He stops for a breath and starts over. “If you’re like my friend’s father’s dad you got into a fight and got punched in the face!”  _

_ “Yes, well my teeth are fine.”  _

_ “Atsu!” _

_ The child jerks. His smile seems to dim. “That’s my dad.” _

_ The man, he can’t be much younger than she, approaches and with a sigh and a nervous chuckle asks, “he’s not bothering you, is he?” _

_ “Yes, he is.”  _

_ The man flushes.  _

_ “I’m sorry, he just likes talking to people. I’ve tried to tell him that it isn’t polite.”  _

_ She shrugs. “Have you tried other means of discipline?” Really it is only a question that borders on being a suggestion, but the man seems to grow more uncomfortable. “Some children only respond to strict lessons and…” _

_ She falls short watching his expression flicker into something of concern. Sometimes she forgets that the Earth Kingdom isn’t so rigid with their children. “Nevermind.” She grumbles, her own face growing red. _

_ “Did I do something bad, dad?” _

_ He shakes his head. “No. Fire Nationals tend to be...stern and blunt.” He puts a hand on the boy’s back.  _

_ Azula swallows, something in her belly flutters with unease and regret. She shouldn’t care. She has no reason to care. But something in her itches to make a better impression. She opens her mouth to call for him to wait but she doesn’t utter a word. She can’t come up with anything to say afterwards. By the time she thinks up something, the man and his boy have slipped into the crowd.  _

_ Apparently children aren’t the only ones that have the tact of a town drunk. And so she is left to navigate the town alone. She supposes that she should simply buy some new shoes and make her way to the city over. She has enough food to last until then.  _

_ That day she learns that children will probably be her second great downfall.  _

_ Or maybe it is something about not being so rigid? _

_ She learns that she still isn’t a good person. That she’s unlovable at worst and hard to be around at best. _

**.oOo.**

Navigating the palace for the first time in years is not unlike getting used to a new town. It is hardly recognizable, easy to get lost in, and she doesn’t know many of the inhabitants. A lot of them openly and unrelentingly eyeball her as she passes. The stares aren’t particularly malicious. In fact, she doesn’t think that they are ill-meaning at all. Mostly they stare at her as though she is a phantasmal spirit. 

“So there are some new portraits up.” He gestures to the gallery. “As in some I mean, one.” 

She catches the faintest of jolts as he seems to recall that the feud for the throne is still a delicate topic. She eyes the image of Zuko standing tall and proud, flame in one hand, olive branch in the other. She doesn’t find herself simmering and seething. It is more or less a solemn acceptance. There is a residual tickle of envy that seeps through the cracks. She thinks that it has less to do with the crown and more to do with the respect it represents. The honor she has lost and the purpose she has yet to find. 

The content and peace he has found that she can’t seem to grasp even when it is securely in her hands. 

“He picked a fine artist.” She remarks. And that is all. They are onto the next hallway. 

“It doesn’t bother you?” He asks.

“The only thing that bothers me is that you’re starting the questions thing again.” 

“How am I supposed to get to know you if I don’t ask questions?”

She shrugs. “Watch. Observe.” She accidently meets the stare of one of the passing servants. “Like everyone else.” She fidgets with the excess folds of her robe. There is a part of her that wonders if she should open up, to tell him everything from start to finish. Perhaps to slip her journal into his bag before he leaves. She backtracks, not knowing what she was thinking. 

“Zuko also had a new room added to the palace.”

“A new room?”

“Yeah it’s full of trinkets from the other nations. He thought that it would be a nice way to show that we’re trying to move away from the war.” 

Azula nods. “It seems like most nations are. I hadn’t expected people to be so...inviting in the Earth Kingdom.”

“Because you’re Fire Nation?”

“That’s correct.” 

“They didn’t recognize you, did they?”

“I have a feeling that they wouldn’t have taken as kindly to me if they did.” She confesses. She wonders if any of the people she had met along the way would still care for her if they found her in the palace with a prettily and painstakingly styled hair and a full face of makeup. Granted, she hasn’t gotten around to that yet. 

“Oh! And we can go out to the garden!” Sokka exclaims. She readily allows the subject change. “That’s different to. Your mom and uncle planted this tea garden and Zuko had some flowers imported. There are more turtle-ducks too!”

“That sounds nice, I suppose. Hajime would have enjoyed it.” 

“Hajime?”

Azula stiffins and scolds herself for letting that slip. “I’d like to see the spa, it has been too long.” 

Mercifully, Sokka gets the hint. “The palace spa is different too.”

She frowns. “Not the spa. I liked the spa.” She folds her arms. “It was perfectly fine the way it was.” 

“I think that you’ll like the change. Come on.” 

At some point Azula had come to lead the way. Like muscle memory, she finds that she can still find her way about the palace. Mostly anyhow. There are things that throw her off, decor that hadn’t been there before, a new portrait, or something that has been moved from one place to another. The spa though, upon arrival, is both the same and different. It still has the frameworks of what it once was but it is grander now, more elegant. The fountain and its adjoining chair are exactly as they had been and a small tree in a large pot still sits on either side of the staircase leading to it. The carpeting is also much the same and sunlight spills in through a large window on the ceiling. 

But there are new dragons that join the ones already accenting the back wall. And these ones jut forward with mouths spilling flames of gold. She notices that they too are fountains that lead to miniature fountains, presumably for hand washing. There are also several small crystals dangling from the ceiling, casting prisms all about the room. And when the sunlight strikes them right, they bounce off of the jets of water. There are also small turtle-duck statues resting near the potted trees.

It is so familiar yet so changed. 

She admits that she does like the change. 

“Do you like it?” 

“It’s nice, Zuzu.”

“I was about to have my hair combed, but you can go first if you want.” 

She would very much like that. It will take less time for them to wash her hair anyways. Where hers has been mournfully hacked, his locks have lengthened so gracefully. She thinks it somewhat cruel how he is now the one with all of the splendor both visually and in status. She feels ruefully unremarkable. “Yes, that would be wonderful.” 

The serving girls file into the room. “You hired them back?”

“They weren’t supposed to have been banished in the first place.” 

She isn’t sure that he had meant it as anything more than a statement of fact, but it still stings. She reclines in the spa chair, feeling terribly uncomfortable and out of place. The longer that she stays the more she feels as though she shouldn’t have come back. It is one thing to be plain in an ordinary world and another to be lackluster when surrounded by splendor. 


	5. A Gardener's Palms

_ The little girl giggles as she watches Azula tug at the turnip and topple over when the leaves come free without the vegetable itself. She lands with a soft thud and an off. Her cheeks burn to a degree that would make her fire feel cool.  _

_ The man laughs, “no, no, you do it like this.”  _

_ Azula sticks her lower lip out and folds her arms over her chest.  _

_ “You gotta take it by the base, if you just pull from the leaves then you’ll just get a fist full of leaves. I mean unless you get lucky. But let's not test our luck because that just makes it harder.” He approaches a new turnip and grips it as close to the vegetable as possible and then gives it a pull. It comes free, dirt shaking from the roots. He brushes it off and tosses it into a wheelbarrow. “Sometimes, if it’s really stubborn, you have to dig around it a little.” _

_ Azula looks at her hands and furrows her brows. She has yet to get dirt under her fingernails and that is not part of her plan.  _

_ He laughs again, “yeah, you’re going to have to get them dirty.” _

_ “I don’t mind getting them dirty. I just don’t want to have to dig dirt out from under my nails.” _

_ “In other words, you don’t want to get them dirty.”  _

_ Her eyes narrow. “I don’t have to do this, you know.” _

_ “You do if ya want old man Ojihara to pay you.”  _

_ Her pout only grows. She opens her mouth but he beats her to it. “And I’m not going to do your share for you.”  _

_ She holds her glare as she wraps her fingers around the leaves and gives the turnip a hard yank. It jerks free to reveal the most pathetically small turnip that has ever been harvested. With a sharp inhale through her nose, she chucks it into the wheelbarrow. The man laughs, “I guess that, that’s a good start.” _

_ “Sure, whatever.” She grumbles.  _

_ “I ken eat that ‘tur’ip, it’s me size.” The little girl calls from her perch. She kicks her legs at the air. “Ken I have that tur’ip?” She asks the man.  _

_ “You’ll have to ask Ojihara.”  _

_ “Just give her the turnip.” Azula rolls her eyes. “He won’t miss one, especially not one  _ that  _ small. My mongoose-lizard wouldn’t even want that.” She plucks the turnip from the pile and tosses it to the girl who beams from ear to ear. At least someone appreciates her hard work.  _

_ The man chuckles again. “I take it you’re the heroic sort?” _

_ Azula tilts her head. _

_ “Stealing food from privileged folks and giving it to children. That’s like, classic hero stuff.”  _

_ “I’m not a hero. That turnip is simply insignificant and won’t change the world or anyone’s life one way or another. She’s going to eat it and forget that I ever gave it to her and Ojihara will never know.”  _

_ She can tell that he is going to laugh again before he does. “Are all of you Fire Nationals so serious all the time?” _

_ “Yes.”  _

_ She yanks another turnip, this time it is worth placing amid the others. She doesn’t want to smile, because it is a really stupid thing to smile over but she does. “I got it.” She remarks smugly. “I harvested a turnip.” _

_ “Great, only twenty or so more. Hopefully you’ll be this enthusiastic about the rest of them.” _

_ Evidently she is at least to the degree that she has made it into a contest; if she can harvest more turnips than him then she is the superior, more skilled harvester. And that is something to take pride in.  _

_ He doesn’t understand why she is so mad that he won the competition that he never knew he was in.  _

_ “I think that you did good!” The little girl declares as they pack it in.  _

_ Azula wipes a beat of sweat off of her forehead. Agni, could she use a shower and those luxurious soaps and shampoos from the palace. She smells like hard work and dirt and turnip. She hates all three odors.  _

_ “So what if he got more. Yours  _ look  _ better. They’re more purple.”  _

_ Azula isn’t sure that purple is the color she would use to describe them, but the compliment still stands. “You are correct.” She agrees. “I’d wager that you’re the only sensible person in this town.”  _

_ “I don’no what that means.” She shrugs. “What’s a sen-si-bowl?”  _

_ “Nevermind.” Azula sighs.  _

_ “Are you gonna stay here or are you gonna go to Chin? My dad says that yer goin’ to Chin?”  _

_ “I am, eventually.” She replies. “I’m just staying here a bit longer than I thought I would.”  _

_ “Good, ‘cause I like you and you can’t leave ‘cause I said so.”  _

_ Azula quirks a brow. “Oh? And how do you think that you’re gonna...going to make me stay?”  _

_ She thinks for a moment. “I’ll tell dad and he’ll make you stay.” She flashes a smile as though she has had achieved some grand victory.  _

_ “If you say so.”  _

_ “I’m Caihong, who are you?”  _

_ “Rikka.”  _

_ The man appears behind her and scoops the child into his arms. He tosses Azula a pouch of coins.  _

_ “This is more than…” More than she earned, she knows that much. She is woefully horrible at harvesting turnips. And she didn’t exactly lose with grace.  _

_ “I gave you some of my share. For keeping Cai entertained.” He grins. “She really likes you.”  _

_ That day she learns what it is to be humble.  _

**.oOo.**

Azula exhales as they run the comb through her hair. The scent of cedar wood rises off of the softly steaming water and mixes with that of the incense that wafts gasps of smoke into the air. She is surprised that the serving girls remember what scents she likes, it is minute detail. She feels the comb against her scalp, a much welcomed sensation as a different serving girl massages delicate smelling lotion into her calloused palms. Another still, scrubs at her feet, carefully grinding away the roughness of a long walk. She hadn’t realized just how terribly her feet were aching until they began to work the knots out of them. 

“Grapes?” Offers another servant. 

Azula shakes her head, content to bask in the pampering. It has been such a long time. She almost feels as though she should be receiving such tender treatment. As leisurely as it is, it feels intimidatingly foreign to be so sublimely indulged. Somehow it feels wrong to let them work the callouses out of her hands and feet and the dirt out of her hair and pores. It is unfathomably wonderful to have them scrubbing aptly smelling soaps over her face, to feel clean for the first time in ages. Yet her stomach still flutters.

The servant tentatively sets the princess’ hand down and takes the other. The other servant is still working on her first foot. The servant with the comb withdraws, “your hair is washed, I’ll fetch some ribbons and hair ornaments.” 

Azula nods. 

“Would you like your nails polished?” Asks the servant working on her left hand.

She nods again. She hasn’t worn polish in ages. And her nails, chipped and broken, could use some filing and evening. 

The other serving girl puts her left foot down and takes the right. This time her lips press into a grim line. “I’m going to have the palace physician look at this one.” 

The fluttering in her belly swells. Admittedly, that foot has been sore but she has since grown used to it. “Why, what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s swollen and inflamed.” 

Azula knows that she has tensed when the girl working on her hand pauses to massage her shoulders. She relaxes again and the girl resumes her task. Azula closes her eyes and inhales through her nose. 

“Good.” Murmurs the remaining serving girl. “Just try to relax.” 

She does, mostly. The physician examines her foot as the team of serving girls fix her hair up and apply a subtle layer of makeup to her face. Significantly less subtle is the amount they apply to her neck. She doesn’t stop them, looking at the scar opens the ones in her mind.

“There’s a slight infection.” The doctor declares. “I’ll get that cleaned up and get you some ointments.”

“That sounds well.” Azula replies. 

He gives her a slight smile. “When you are finished here, I’d like to give you a full examination. We’d like you to be in good health for when your homecoming is announced.”

“Yes, I would like to be in good health.” She agrees. Though she doesn’t feel particularly ill, it couldn’t hurt to make sure. She supposes that she might be at least slightly malnourished, her hair doesn’t grow as fast as it used to and its color is less vibrant. 

It doesn’t piece together until he has left the room; they are going to parade her in front of all of Capital City. The amount of attention that Zuko had garnered with his arrival after three years was record breaking. She has been out of the public eye for nearly six; one spent institutionalized, another two self-confined to the palace, three in the Earth Kingdom, and an additional two months trekking from Yon Rah to Capital City.

Her mouth runs dry. She used to love the attention, loved standing over her subjects and looking down upon the crowd. She isn’t sure that this is still something she will relish in. 

She isn’t sure how they will take to her after so long. 

They took kindly enough to Zuko’s return…

“Hey, Azula!” Sokka greets.

**.oOo.**

His stomach does a little flop at the sight of her. Her servant just finishes applying a soft shade of red to her lips. It is like looking into the past; save for shorter hair, he is looking at the girl he’d pinned to the wall during an eclipse. She is styled to almost uncanny perfection; well manicured nails, soft skin--sunburns, scars, and freckles concealed, long and pretty lashes…

He suppresses a shudder. 

“Sokka.” She returns the greeting. 

He clears his throat, “how are you?” 

She is quiet for a moment. “My foot is infected.” She turns it inward and back outward again. 

“How bad?” He asks. 

“The physician says that it isn’t anything to worry about.” 

But he has a suspicion that she is worried about something. The inquiry burns on his tongue but this time he leaves it there, lest she make another remark about how many questions he always has for her. He wanders closer and asks something more mundane instead, “it must be nice to get spoiled again.” 

He catches the slightest upward quirk of her lip. And he realizes that his initial assessment is wrong; there are other differences between she and who she had been. Though her makeup and hair are fixed up similarly, her stance isn’t so rigid and her eyes are warmer. At the very least, some of the intimidating coldness has left them. And up close he can see the more prominent scars beneath the concealer. 

She smells nice too, he realizes. And this time without the tinges of smoke.

“Yes, quite.” She answers. “They are going to announce my arrival.” 

He laughs, “I feel like that’s a given, right?”

She works her jaw, slightly sticking her lip out. “Yes, I suppose.” 

“You want me to come out with you when they announce…”

She shakes her head, “that would look ridiculous.” She pauses. “I mean, I need to go by myself or I won’t be taken seriously. I am stable. I can take care of myself.” 

“I think that everyone knows that.” 

“Perhaps.” She replies. “But I need to  _ know  _ that everyone knows.” 

The servants take a step back, one steps forward again and applies one final stroke of eyeshadow and holds a mirror up for her. “That will suffice.” She says. 

“If you are ready…” The physician prompts. 

“I’ll see you at dinner, Sokka.” 

He watches her walk away. She limps slightly and he guesses that the doctor has advised against putting her full weight on that foot. He wanders back down the hall and to his room. He wonders how Katara and the others are going to take to Azula when they finally arrive. He hopes that they will give her a chance. He can’t explain it but he thinks that it would sting to see her get discouraged and leave again.

He can’t explain it, but he wants her around. 

**.oOo.**

Tomorrow, they tell her. They will have a speech prepared and her outfit ready. Tomorrow everyone in the capital will know that their princess as come home. Tomorrow word will spread fast and she is certain that her moment of peace will have subsided. 

It has already done so, she reminds herself, her fingers curling around the stone in her pocket. Her thumb brushes over the engraving.

She sits down beneath the maple and lets the wind rustle the fabrics of her robes. The silk caresses her skin pleasantly, like the stokes of a lover’s finger. More like the spectral finders of a lover gone.

She swallows, her lower lip trembling. 

She draws her legs up to her chest 

The sun bathes the garden in a wash of picturesque orange. She leans her head against the tree and watches it sink. When it reaches the bottom, she closes her eyes. The night air has a chill, like a death gasp. She grips the stone tighter. She doesn’t notice Zuko taking a seat next to her. She doesn’t wake when he lifts her up and carries her back to her room. Doesn’t stir when he pulls the covers over her shoulders. 

She dreams of arms around her. 

Of a gleeful laugh. 

Of a sunrise and a warm breeze.

It smells faintly of turnip and pine resin. 

It smells of security, of hope. 


	6. Past Lives & Future Trepidations

_ The world takes her to the seaside. It does so with a force that she doesn’t expect. But then, she hasn’t expected to stay in Wu Jing as long as she has. She isn’t sure how she had gone from vowing to be at Chin city within the week to making excuses to stay in Wu Jing.  _

_ She sighs, who is she trying to fool, she knows why she has tethered herself and she is both afraid of and exhilarated by it.  _

_ She was anyhow. She looks into the waves as she casts a net out. It would seem that she is no longer welcomed in Wu Jing. She supposes that it was only a matter of time before that happened. She is the only firebender in the village and not everyone takes kindly to it. She is under the impression that a good handful of them only tolerated her because they were under the impression that she’d be leaving soon.  _

_ She drags the net back in, it is significantly heavier, a good sign. “You’re a natural.” The captain comments, she helps Azula pull it back in. “You sure that you’ve never done this before?” _

_ Azula nods.  _

_ “Maybe in a past life?” _

_ She shakes her head, “in a past life I was a dragon.” _

_ The woman chuckles, “ain’t mean ye couldn’t ‘a been a fisherman in a different one.”  _

_ Azula shrugs. “I suppose.” Though she sincerely doubts it.  _

_ “Yee don’t talk much.”  _

_ She shrugs. “Just here for some coin. I’m not trying to form bonds.”  _

_ “I take it the las’ bond yee formed didn’t end so well? People take to the seas when they wanna forget the land.” _

_ “We’re on a short fishing trip, I’ll be back on land by sundown.”  _

_ “So ye ain’t runnin’ away from something?”  _

_ She empties the fish and throws the net back to the waves. The captain disappears back below deck and Azula slumps over the rails. The wind brings a flutter to her hair and the scent of fish to her nose. The ship hits a wave and the seaspray brings salt to her lips. It leaves her feeling sticky and dirty. She yearns for this trip to be over with so she can take her earnings and go. She has caught such an excess that she will no longer have to fret over meals nor the tears in her clothing and holes in her shoes.  _

_ Perhaps she has done well by leaving Ojihara and his rancid turnips. That loathsome man...She reels in her net again. She is going to be mighty sore by the end of this endeavor.  _

_ “Need some help with that?” _

_ “I can…” she huffs. “I can do it myself.” It is a full body effort by now but she almost has her catch. She hears the ripping of a rope and curses. The Water Tribesman hustles towards the net and holds the severed ends together. He looks away just long enough. She slams a ball of fire into the rails, the kickback throws her onto her back, but the net, brimming with flopping fish, comes with her. She winces, and lays dazed for a moment. _

_ “Are you…?” _

_ “I’m fine.”  _

_ He casts a glance at her haul of squirming fish. “Yeah, with a catch like that I imagine you will be.”  _

_ She gets to her feet and cringes, her pants are rather uncomfortably soaked through and she hasn’t a change of clothes. She won’t have one until she makes it back to the inn.  _

_ “Have you been in our village long?” _

_ She shakes her head. “And I won’t be staying long. I’m not a fishing village sort.” _

_ He quirks a brow. _

_ “I can catch a few fish, that doesn’t make me a good fit for…” _

_ “Then perhaps you’d be suited for the Tribes?” _

_ “Absolutely not!” She replies abruptly. “I’m not trying to stray  _ that  _ far from home. Even if I were, I can’t imagine that the cold would do my fire any good.”  _

_ “Well I think that you’d be good for a fishing village lifestyle.” _

_ “Your judgement is poor.” _

_ “So your social skills.”  _

_ She gives a haunty sniff, bristling at the odor of fish. “Which is precisely why I shouldn't join a fishing crew in the long term. I won’t have myself tethered in one place and to a handful of people.” Even as she says it she feels for the stone in her pocket. She ought to chuck it over the side of the boat.  _

_ The man’s face softens. “Can I help you collect your fish?” _

_ “You may help me, but only because I don’t like how their scales feel.”  _

_ “I take it that you won’t be skinning them?” _

_ Her nose crinkles, “skinning them?” She looks at her hands. They aren’t clean nor are they smooth and soft anymore. But they aren’t yet bloodstained and shredded by scales. “I am going to sell them and someone else can have the pleasure.”  _

_ “Who are you?” _

_ “Cheyul.”  _

_ “Where do you come from, Cheyul?” _ _  
  
_

_ “The Fire Nation.”  _

_ “I know that. But which part.”  _

_ “Just help me with these.” She gestures to the fish. _

_ By the time they reach the docks, the fish are packed neatly into crates and ready for selling.  _

_ “Where were you before you came to this village?” _

_ “Why do you care?” She snaps. Her eyes don’t leave the men and women working to bind their vessel to the dock.  _

_ He shrugs. “I suppose that it’s because I’ve never met someone like you before.”  _

_ “Stern, uptight, hard to get along with? Then you have met many firebenders.” She lifts one of her crates and carries it towards a one of several dockside buyers for weighing. “I’ll have more.” She mutters and the buyer nods.  _

_ The Water Tribesman manages a half smile and sets another crate down. “I was going to say guarded and...sharp. I don’t know, there’s just something  _ different  _ about you.”  _

_ Different, she thinks. And when she thinks of different, she thinks of the things that make her so. These are the same things that make her a monster. The same things that she is trying to out pace. The things that pursue and catch up to her no matter where she goes. “You’re like all of them.” She mutters. “I’m different and you’re like all of the rest.” _

_ “How do you figure that?” _

_ She sets her last crate down and stares him in the eye. “You want to get to know me and when you finally do, you realize that you were mistaken. That, that isn’t what you want at all.” _

_ The buyer grins and hands her an extremely generously heavy pouch. She staches it away in her satchel.  _

_ “How do you figure?” _

_ “I’ve learned to tell.” She turns from him and strides away.  _

_ “Who hurt you?” He asks. _

_ “Who hasn’t?” She returns.  _

_ And who hasn’t she hurt? Of course Ojihara would detest her. Of course they all would. And for what? Because she didn’t want to babysit his grandchild? Really it was a no win situation; either she ‘wasn’t earning her keep’ or she’d be outcast for managing to traumatize the child.  _

_ Decidedly, she hates children. Loathes them. They are needy and fussy and all too curious. _

_ “So you left because you’ve been hurt? Where are you going to go and how long do you think those coins are going to last?” _

_ And adults are even worse. _

_ “They’ll last me long enough to find another quick job.” She hastens her pace. “It’s none of your concern.”  _

_ “So you’re just going to keep on running?” The man asks. “I thought that firebenders were supposed to be brave and head on. A tribesman...we stick to our values.” _

_ “You assume I have values.” She cuts herself short before she can add, ‘of my own.’ It might be that he is right, at least to some degree; perhaps she should return to the Fire Nation and concede. She has gone searching for something and she hasn’t found it. She hasn’t even figured out what she is searching for. It might be that her purpose, her destiny lies in a cell or a padded room.  _

_ “You don’t have anything that keeps you attached to anywhere?” His tone softens.  _

_ “I’ve got nothing at all.” She takes another step. _

_ The stone in her pocket knocks against her leg. _

_ That night she learns the depth of a small thing.  _

**.oOo.**

She studies herself in the mirror. Her reflection is elegant and pretty, decorated and done up to the fullest. Rubies on golden chains sparkle on her ears, her fingers, and around her neck. They glisten in her hair and shimmer on the bulky silk folds of her gown, a gown that hides the bandages that wrap her foot and ankle.. They have, once again, evened the color of her skin and crafted a sharpness to her eyes and lips. It is almost as though she has never left at all. She thought that it would have been comforting to revel in a vision of the past. To see her old, unblemished face peering prestinly back at her. 

It only feels as though she has erased something...

“Satisfied?”

Azula rubs her lips together and shakes her head.

“What is it? Do you want us to apply more makeup?”

She shakes her head vigorously. 

“Less?”

She hesitates.

She nods. 

“You’re not backing out, are you?” Zuko asks.

“Why would you think that?”

“You’re having your makeup washed off.”

“I wanted less of it.” 

He furrows his brows as her servants remove a healthy layer of concealer. 

“I thought that you…”

“They will be staring at me from a rather large distance. They won’t notice much.” 

The clean layer and layer away to her satisfaction. Until she is almost barefaced. Until a touch of eyeshadow, eyeliner, and lipstick remain. She brushes her fingers over her cheek. 

The servants exit and a team of fire sages come to take their place. “Lo and Li will begin the introductions, you will emerge when they speak your name. We recommend that you start making your way to the balcony…”

She lets the man finish but she knows the workings of it well enough. With her nod the sage replies, “I shall tell them to begin.”

It is Sokka who fills their vacancy. “You look nice.” He smiles. 

She clasps her hands over her knee. “Thank you.” 

“You’re really tense.”

“It’s my natural state.” 

He chuckles though she isn’t joking. 

“Are you sure that you don’t want me or Zuko to accompany you?”

“I don’t need hand holding, Sokka.” She doesn’t quite mean it but she speaks with an extra bite. 

“Just...ya know offering.” 

“Offering once was plenty.” A series of claps accent her words and she knows that the twins have made it to the balcony. 

“I can also come out if you’d like.”

“I don’t need your coddling either, Zuzu.” 

Doesn’t need it and feels sick at the thought of having it. Of standing rather plainly next to him in his opulent and awestiking regalia. Of being quite ordinary and unaccomplished. She faintly wonders if he had thought the same during his homecoming. 

“We have searched every stretch of our Nation and beyond our land. Our search had turned up nothing and we had assumed the worst.” There is no glory to boast. No heroic deeds to tell of. Nothing substantial at all really. Nothing worth announcing. “What we have found is that a phoenix can rise back on its own.” They make it sound more glorious than it is. Azula supposes that, that is their job. She rises, her stomach gives a small flop. Zuko offers her an encouraging smile and Sokka mouths a good luck. She is thankful that the crowd won't be able to see her limp, however slight it is. 

They pause and she pauses, hand gripping the fabric of the curtain. She closes her eyes. 

“Now after six long years,” Lo says. 

“She is ready to return to the public’s eye!” Li finishes.

“Your princess, Azula!” They both finish.

She gently pushes the curtain aside and slips onto the balcony. Her eyes scan a wholly silent crowd. She isn’t surprised to be met with a very un-Fire Nation coldness. Her footfalls echo about the plaza as she makes her way to the railing. Her hands curl around them, the wind stirs her hair chopsticks, sending their lavish ornamentation tinkling.

And then the crowd erupts. Not into the hateful sneers and yells that she had anticipated but a rather thunderous clapping. They are pridefully noisy, it is almost dizzying. She grips the rails tighter. And tighter still when she looks off into the distance and sees that the statue of her father has been demolished, probably melted down and reshaped into one of Zuko.

“Would you like to address your people?” The twins offer. 

Azula’s stomach lurches a second time. They haven’t told her that she was to do so, though she supposed that she should have figured as much. She almost shakes her head but the crowd falls silent again. And she is silent. The world is all too still. 

Her lips part and she tilts her head up, bearing the scar on her neck, and inhales through her nose. “I have been to a good many places.” She says at last as she peers over the crowd. It is very different from when she has last stood up here. Spots of green and blue mix with red. Eyes of gold, green, and blue fix on her with anticipation. “It is a pleasure to be home again. Home in the greatest nation with a rekindled knowledge that the Fire Nation is the crown jewel of the world.” She pauses, almost leaving it at that. Her fingers brush over one of the two trinkets she has tucked into her gown. She has garnered another round of approving claps and remarks, mostly from the red specks. She waits for them to go silent. “Though I suppose that there are many other jewels that are tantalizing in their own respects.” And now the blue and green join.

She reaches into the folds of her gown and feels for her stone. She grips it tightly while holding her head high until the twins beckon for her to return inside. “You will be seeing more of me.” She concludes as her subjects bow. 

“You did amazing!” Sokka exclaims. 

“I hardly did anything at all.” Azula shrugs. “These things are all for show.” 

“They weren’t booing you.” 

“Is that the reception you tend to get?” 

“People love me!” Sokka declares. 

“If you say so.” 

**.oOo.**

“You feel better now, don’t you?”

Azula reclines on the sofa and lets her hair down. It is true, she does feel much less tense now that a public appearance isn’t looming over her head. “I feel well enough Sokka.” It very much helps to be out of that gown and in something less excessive, less restrictive. She rests her head upon the arm rest and closes her eyes. 

“You are happy to be back, right?” Zuko asks.

“Why does everyone ask so many questions?”

“Because you’re hard to read and don’t give clear answers the first time around.” 

“I just got back, Zuzu. I haven’t decided how I feel about it.”

“Oh come on, you can’t tell me that you don’t enjoy the pampering!” Sokka declares as he quite brazenly takes a seat. He doesn’t wait for her to move her legs, opting to simply sit on them instead. She frowns and gives him a rather solid kick. He jolts and she curls her legs up. He sits back down. 

“It is nice.” She replies. “I missed being clean.” She brings her sleeve to her nose and inhales the fresh scent of various flora. 

“I liked your speech.” 

“It wasn’t much of a speech. Just a few carefully selected words.” Though careful is a bit of a stretch considering that she hadn’t pre-prepared them. 

“It was still nice.” Sokka says. 

She shrugs. 

“Can you tell us about what you did in the Earth Kingdom?”    
  
“Is lunch almost ready? I’m quite hungry.” She moves her hand from behind her head to her belly. “Dumplings would be nice.” She hasn’t had them in ages. Not fresh and steaming to palace perfection. 

“Sure, I’ll let the cooks know that, that’s what you want.” Zuko replies. “It’ll be nice to sit at the table together again. Mai and TyLee will be there.” 

“Of course.” She says simply. She snatches up one of the decorative pillows and holds it to her chest. She wonders how it is that she had come to expect that she wouldn’t be seeing either of them again. She wonders how it will be received if she simply stole away in the night and disappeared again. 


	7. A Wanderer's Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be more Sokkla heavy.

_ She can’t seem to get the smell of fish out of her clothing and her mongoose-lizard isn’t so fond of it. Rukk isn’t very helpful; the man is quite adamant that the sea never leaves you once you get it on you. She is beginning to wonder if it is her clothes that smell of fish or if it is that his scent is simply that pungent.  _

_ Though the question sits on her tongue, she leaves it there. But it itches in the back of her mind; why would he keep following her when she has only been cold to him. She has a feeling that it is a pity thing, and she doesn’t want to open that door.  _

_ “So you’re really not going back?” He asks, clearly bolder than she. “You’re just going to leave these people who have been taking care of you for weeks and you’re just going to move on without a word.” _

_ “I’ve been taking care of myself and I am aware that I have overstayed my welcome. How comfortable do you think they are having a firebender around?” _

_ Rukk shrugs. “I guess no more or less comfortable than they are with a tribesman?”  _

_ “Tribesmen aren’t warmongerers.” _

_ “Most firebenders aren’t either.”  _

_ “Perhaps I am among those that are.”  _

_ He quirks a brow, “you don’t really strike me as the warmongering type.”  _

_ “I might be the type that has walked right into war and slaughtered Earth Kingdom folks by the dozen. Without flinching.” She has come to find that the best way to tell a lie is to offer an exaggeration of the truth. They never believe her truths when she tells them like so.  _

_ Like clockwork, the man laughs. “You wouldn’t even skin a fish.” _

_ “Fish have scales. Human flesh is soft.” She pauses. “More pleasant to the touch.”  _

_ He laughs again.  _

_ “Do you find war crimes funny?” _

_ “When you talk of them like that, sure.”  _

_ She gives a soft hum. “Perhaps you won’t be abysmal company afterall.”  _

_ He grins. “Well of course not. We tribesmen have plenty of charm.” _

_ “As much charm as a Unagi.”  _

_ “You are merciless.” _

_ “I told you, I used to slaughter people like you en masse.”  _

**_.oOo._ **

_ She wonders if he is a wanderer too. If he has nothing better to do than accompany her to Chin. She is almost there, likely it will take another day or two. The skyline of Wu Jing looms on the horizon, hanging about like a stubborn spirit, a thing to run circles in her mind. _

_ “We can stop there for the night.” Rukk suggests. “They’ll probably have somewhere for you to tie up your mongoose-lizard for the night. He looks exhausted.” _

_ Azula spares the creature a glance and shakes her head. “He’s fine. I’ve had him venture further than this. We will find a place to set up camp.” Even so, she slips down and opts to walk on her own for a while. _

_ Rukk tilts his head, “That village will be more comfortable than sleeping outside. We have enough coin…”  _

_ She shakes her head. “You can spend one more night or two sleeping outside.” _

_ “I don’t understand why we can’t…” _

_ “I didn’t ask you to follow me.” She mutters. “You can return to that fishing village if you’d prefer.”  _

_ He doesn’t leave her but he doesn’t speak with her anymore. She has half the mind to tell him to leave if he is going to be such dour company, but she hasn’t been alone since the plains and she isn’t ready to be alone again. Even if she is probably better off that way. Better off but cannot be all the same.  _

_ The skyline has, nearly an hour ago, disappeared behind a canopy of pine and oak. It is just as well to not have to look at it, to dwell upon it. Even still, she can practically smell the perfume of turnip. The smell of what could have been home.  _

_ She thinks that she might not be meant to have a home at all.  _

_ It is probably more beneficial to keep from staying in one place for too long. She can’t afford tethers or attachments anyways, they only destroy her in the long run.  _

_ “Why are you still here?” She grumbles. When the sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs is no longer enough.  _

_ “I really don’t know.” He returns with just as much venom. “I guess it’s because I’ve already gone so far out of my way.” _

_ “I didn’t tell you to do that.” She reiterates.  _

_ “Yes well I thought you could use the company. I’m starting to see why you have none.” _

_ “I thought that I made it rather apparent the first time we spoke.” She replies quietly. “It isn’t my fault that you saw something that wasn’t there and decided to wager on it.” She swallows. It is very nearly the same conversation that she’d had with Ojihara.  _

_ “You’re right. But you can at least try to prove me wrong.”  _

_ She shrugs. “That’s just it, Rukk. There’s nothing to prove wrong because you are right. You should…” she breaks off into a sharp cry that drowns the sound of a metallic clamp. Her vision goes fuzzy for a moment and she stoops down. Such abrupt pain leaves her body feeling flacid and her vision quite dark. She closes her eyes and takes a few breaths. Rukk’s voice hovers on the very edge of her awareness. His touch is even more distant.  _

_ She inhales again several more times. With each drawn breath, her vision seems to return to her but she can’t quite shake the dizzy feeling. “Hold still.” Rukk instructs as though she can do anything but.  _

_ He freezes the chain and she gestures to her mongoose-lizard’s saddlebags. “There’s an axe in one of those.” He nods and comes back with it, hacking away at the chain.  _

_ “I don’t think that I can unclamp it.” He mutters.  _

_ Azula wills herself to look at the platypus-bear trap. It has her ankle quite firmly locked in its rusty metal jaws. She cringes. Rust. Infection. She gives a drawn exhale, a shuddering, pained one. “I suppose that we’re going to Wu Jing afterall.” _

_ Rukk’s eyes light up with understanding. “That’s the village you were running away from.” _

_ “Can we just…” she hisses. “Can we just go?”  _

_ He lifts her into his arms and helps her mount her mongoose-lizard. Her fingers find the stone in her pocket and close tightly around it.  _

_ “It doesn’t hurt too badly, does it?” _

_ “I’ve had worse.” She murmurs. They don’t speak again until they reach Wu Jing. Only then does she mention, “try not to make a spectacle.” Not that it will matter, they will know her by the mongoose-lizard. She is the only person who prefers them to ostrich-horses.  _

_ “I take it that you know where the doctors are?” _

_ She nods. “Wu Jing has several but Min-Min is the best.”  _

**_.oOo._ **

_ Azula flexes her foot and Min-Min gives her a rather hard slap, “stop it, you’re gonna to hurt yourself more.” _

_ Azula folds her arms over her chest.  _

_ “How’d you do that anyways?” The girl asks.  _

_ “Don’t worry about it.”  _

_ Min-Min offers her a very familiar devious grin, “you wasn’t paying attention, was you? You was walkin’ but not watchin’ where you was walkin?” _

_ “That’s…” _

_ “Exactly what happened.” Rukk fills in.  _

_ “Actually it is his fault.”  _

_ “Cause you was watchin’ him ‘stead ‘a the ground.”  _

_ Azula doesn’t reply.  _

_ “We were having an argument.” _

_ Min-Min laughs, “Rikka has a lot ‘a those.” She inspects Azula’s ankle one last time and hums to herself before mumbling, “gonna go get you some more ointment, Rim should be back with them anti-infectants.” She flashes a smile and disappears into the next room. _

_ “Rikka?” Rukk asks. “You said that your name is Cheyul.” _

_ “It is.” Azula fidgets with the bandages. “And in Wu Jing it is Rikka. It will be something else when I get to Chin and that’s all that you need to know.”  _

_ He furrows his brows. “What are you running from?” _

_ “Something that I can’t outpace.”  _

_ “How am I supposed to be your friend if you only lie to me?” _

_ “You aren’t. I made that clear plenty of times. I don’t have friends and there’s a good reason for that.” _

_ She had played a stupid game and she had lost it. She thinks that she was trying to lose. But in some sense she has won because she has proven herself right. That small victory pales in comparison to the loss. _

_ Rukk leaves that night. _

_ She doesn’t see him again. _

_ She had pushed too far and he had run out of patience. Really he had no attachments to her. He was just a decent man who wanted to help. And she is just a woman with a talent for repelling people who may possibly care.  _

_ That night she learns that some games can’t be won.  _

_ Shouldn’t be played at all.  _

**.oOo.**

The palace glows, like a jewel in the night. Twinkling in the near distance. It has been adorned in several thousand candles that have been lit since her return. 

They will go out soon.

The night isn’t any manner of quiet and night provides no cover. She doesn’t really need it, not when she has elected to dress herself so unremarkably. She hasn’t been seen up close in so long that she is certain that her webwork of scars will keep her concealed better than any cloak.

She feels for her coin pouch and makes her way to the first food cart she sees. It is quite a pity that she won’t be having her dumplings after all. 

“What can I get for you?” The man asks.

She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter as long as I can eat it.” She slides him a few copper pieces. “Doesn’t have to be fancy.” 

And yet he gives her more than she has paid for. She waits for him to turn his back before setting a few more coins on the counter and hustling off. There is no dignity in not paying what is due. She takes a bite of roast duck as she carries along. She hasn’t yet decided if she is going to remain in the Fire Nation or if she will flee back to the Earth Kingdom again. Perhaps Rukk had been right all along; maybe she should take herself as far as she can to some fishing village in one of the Water Tribes. 

She feels a small body collide with her own. The child looks up and beams from ear to ear, “you have to move, lady, you’re in the way.” Her heart seizes. He looks so much like...

“Ruki!” A woman snaps. “That’s not what we say when we  _ run into _ someone and interrupt their meal.” 

“It’s fine.” Azula murmurs. 

“He needs to learn some manners, this boy does.” The woman continues anyhow. 

“That isn’t necessary.” She says as the woman raises her hand. It comes down anyways and the child grows teary eyed. Azula has takes another bite of her roast duck, if only to give her something else to think of. How strange is it that she is no longer used to this sort of thing. She realizes that it has been ages since she has seen a parent raise a hand to their child. She can’t help but feel as though she has been robbed of something. Purity and innocence perhaps. And it is all around, she realizes, the children in the Capital don’t laugh quite as loud. They don’t wander about on their own and when they do, there is always someone to sweep them back under supervision. 

The woman raises her hand again. 

“Once was good enough.” Azula says cooly. 

The woman’s eyes narrow. “How long have you been in the Earth Kingdom?” 

“Pardon?” 

The woman sniffs. “We have standards in the Fire Nation. Order. Children don’t run around like lunatics…”

Lunatics...she ponders the word. How many times has that been thrust upon her. She nearly laughs; indeed, most children don’t carry themselves as she carries herself. “Maybe they should.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Or maybe she did. She isn’t sure. 

“Maybe you should go back there.”

“I’ve been considering it.” 

The woman sniffs again, “it is a shame when roots get lost.”

“Hmm?” She should know better than to engage. But she is propelled by the same curiosity that had once had her making a perfect fool of herself on Ember Island so many years ago.

“You have the vocabulary of a noble but your accent is dreadful.” 

The child wipes his eyes and offers her what can only be an apologetic expression. 

“Better to speak with strange inflections than to speak without substance.” 

The woman scoffs, picks up her skirts, and storms away. Last word or not, she still feels as though she has lost. And yet she at least knows that this isn’t her home anymore. But the Earth Kingdom cannot be either. 

It might be that she truly doesn’t belong anywhere. 

“Nikushimi is quite the character, isn’t she?” 

Azula shrugs. “I’ve met several.” Decidedly she is no worse than her father would be were she to brazenly march up to his cell and strike up a conversation. 

The man takes one final bite of his apple and burns the core. “Were they all dull minded enough to speak to royalty like that?” 

She tenses.

The man laughs. “Most of us aren’t as halfwitted as Niku. We can recognize our princess.” 

She thinks again of Ember Island. “You would be surprised.” 

He chuckles again. 

She thinks that the conversation has concluded, but he leans back against the alley wall and lingers. His eyes land on the scar on her throat. He opens his mouth and she prepares to tell him that it is none of his business. “It’s good to have you back, princess.” He smiles instead. 

“Thank you.” 


	8. He Doesn't Leave

_ She spends the night at Min-Min’s her ankle and foot throb incessantly, it keeps her from escaping into the merciful world of sleep. She spends much of the night agonizing over how irreparably isolated she is. She tells herself that she isn’t sure why she can’t bring herself to let anyone in. Why she always flashes the worst of her colors at the first sign of a bond.  _

_ But she knows. She knows very well. But she doesn’t want to say the word. Doesn’t want to admit it.  _

_ Fear.  _

_ It is always about fear.  _

_ She is afraid and so she will make others fear her. If they fear her...if they hate her then she won’t grow attached. And if she doesn’t grow attached then she won’t have to fear loss. If she purposefully pushes everyone away then she won’t have to fear doing it by accident. At least this way she controls what she loses.  _

_ She doesn’t get even a minute of sleep. Rather, she stares out the window until a crack of yellow appears on the horizon. It isn’t until the sun is well in the sky that the door bursts open. _

_ She utters a cry of surprise and annoyance as she finds herself being body slammed onto the mattress, “you’re back!” The boy shouts.  _

_ She inhales deeply and plucks him off of her. “I’m back Atsu.” Her forlorn manner of speaking does not perturb him in the slightest. She would wager that he hasn’t caught a hint of it at all. “How is your father?” _

_ The boy grins and opens his mouth.  _

_ “I’m fine now.” The man says.  _

_ “What was wrong before now?” _

_ He presses his lips together and rubs his hands over his face. “I was worried.” _

_ “About what?” _

_ And now he looks thoroughly and truly exhausted. “You, Rikka.” He catches sight of her foot, “And I guess I had a good reason to be.” _

_ “I’m fine. It’s…” she remembers glitching at the depth of the trap’s bite. “Not as bad as Min-Min probably made it sound.”  _

_ “Rikka, I didn’t think that you were going to come back.” _

_ “Why would you think that?” It is a stupid question but she doesn’t know how else she is supposed to reply. She can’t reassure him that she would have. _

_ “Because you have a history of…” He makes a rather absurd and sweeping arm gesture. “Of wandering.” When she doesn’t speak he fills in the gaps. “And you would have done it again if you had two feet to do it on.” _

_ She stares at the bedsheets.  _

_ “You know that he cried right?” _

_ “Nah-uh!” Atsu shakes his head rapidly. “You cried, dad.” _

_ “That makes one person.” Azula mutters. “I know that I’m not wanted here.” _

_ “What are you talking about?” _

_ “How long did you imagine that they would be tolerant of a firebender…” _

_ “A long time, Rikka.” He says simply.  _

_ She swallows. _

_ “Why do you think that you aren’t wanted here?” _

_ “Ojihara said as much.” _

_ He quirks a brow. “Really? Because Caihong’s father tells me that his old man hit the drinks harder than he has in a while the night you left.” _

_ She inhales sharply through her nose. “Well if he wasn’t mad then, he certainly is now.”  _

_ “Oh no, he was mad. He’s still furious. He said that he has never met a more disrespectful, ungrateful, unhelpful, demon-sent being in his entire life.” _

_ Azula flinches.  _

_ “But he never met someone that made his granddaughter smile that much. And he never met anyone else who could actually get his son off of his lazy ass to harvest  _ that  _ many turnips.”  _

_ She feels the mattress dip. “Old man Oji likes you. It’s just that he’s about as awful as you are at letting people know that.”  _

_ “You know just what to say.” Azula grumbles. _

_ “That’s not true, I could tell you to walk on over to Old Man Oji’s farm and make amends. Instead I’m telling you to make amends with Old Man Oji but do it after I walk him to you.”  _

_ Azula offers him her most deadpan stare before taking hold of the bedpost and heaving herself up. “It isn’t broken, it’s swollen, I can walk just fine.” One step proves that she, in fact, cannot.  _

_ With a sigh, he scoops her into his arms and carries her outside.  _

_ “What are you--” _

_ “I haven’t known you long, Rikka. But I’ve known you long enough to know that you’ll find a way to leave your bed somehow. I figured that I’d save everyone the trouble and help you do it.”  _

_ “Where are we going?” _

_ “We’re going by Old Man Oji!” Atsu declares. “Dad said that he was gonna make you apologize to Oji. Guess what!?” _

_ “What?” _

_ “While you were gone, one of my other teeth got wiggly!”  _

_ “That’s nice, Atsu.” Truthfully she finds his fascination with teeth and biting things quite appalling. She turns her attention to his father. “Are you really going to take me to Ojihara’s home?” _

_ “I sure am.”  _

**.oOo.**

_ She feels like a child as she sits at the table.  _

_ “Oooo, yer in trouble.” Caihong whispers.  _

_ “Shut up.” She hisses. _

_ Caihong giggles. Atsu giggles. She frowns quite deeply. Evidently she had never imagined, could have never possibly imagined, that she would find herself waiting on an old man while two children poke fun at her strife.  _

_ She feels hands curl over her shoulders. At least she has something going for her. He massages the tension out of her shoulders. She doesn’t think that she could have imagined that one of the children’s fathers would be a source of comfort. Atsu grins at his father. And then he looks at her. Looks her straight in the eye with a rather furious intensity. He holds her stare, she refuses to blink first and he doesn’t do it either. And then he opens his mouth and wiggles his tooth at her.  _

_ He bursts out laughing. _

_ Caihong bursts out laughing.  _

_ Azula does not understand children.  _

_ The boy’s father laughs too. She decides that she doesn’t understand people in general. “I do not understand. Why are we laughing?” _

_ The man shrugs. “Sometimes you just have to laugh because they’re laughing, ya know?”  _

_ “No.”  _

_ “Rikka.” _

_ She tenses at the creaky voice.  _

_ “Ojihara.”  _

_ “You stupid, reckless girl!”  _

_ Her temper flares but she keeps her voice dangerously low and light, “I am anything but.” She thinks that she sounds icy and slick but maybe she just sounds sad and dejected. _

_ Ojihara sighs and his expression softens. “You are probably one of the brightest workers I’ve had…”  _

_ “The bar is rather low.” _

_ The old man chuckles. “‘Round these parts, maybe. But you’re an intelligent woman. I guess that that’s why I don’t understand how you can just up and leave after one argument.”  _

_ She shrugs. “I am smart enough to take a hint. I received several of them. They weren’t well concealed.”  _

_ “One time I went to the zoo and I met a seal-tiger. Or maybe it was a tiger-seal…” Atsu trails off.  _

_ “Can your boy and my granddaughter outside?” And with that request, she and Ojihara are alone. He lets a few moments pass before speaking. “I wouldn’t have been so cross if I didn’t see potential in you.” _

_ She nods, this she understands. She isn’t sure how she hadn’t thought of that before. “My father is the same he…” She could slap herself. That is too much. She isn’t sure how she could let such a thing slip. “I think that you shouldn’t set your expectations so high. I am rather good at laying waste to potential.” She musters a bitter smile, “believe me.”  _

_ “I don’t.” Ojihara replies. “Not for a moment.” _

_ “If you knew…” _

_ He holds his hand up. “I know all that I need to. I know that sometimes tools are needed for potential to be reached. I would like to give you those tools if you would be open to them.”  _

_ Azula swallows, “you don’t know what tools I need.” _

_ “Not all of them, no. But I think I can name a few.” He pauses. “Patience and understanding, second chances. I think that those are good tools to offer.”  _

**.oOo.**

_ They are waiting for her when she slowly hobbles her way down the porch steps. Ojihara calls Caihong in for dinner. He offers to let them stay but Azula shakes her head. She can see it in his eyes, that Atsu has already claimed her attention for the night. _

_ “Wasn’t so bad was it? To apologize.” _

_ “I didn’t apologize.” She says smugly.  _

_ “Old Man Oji wouldn’t have forgiven you if you didn’t in some way or another.” He shrugs. “He’s good at gauging people.” _

_ She cocks her head. _

_ “If he thinks that you’re worth it, you’re worth it.” He says as though it truly is that simple.  _

_ “Do you agree with him?” _

_ He comes to a stop. “Well Atsu hasn’t taken this kindly to a stranger since his mother walked out on us…” He pauses. “I agree with Old Man Oji. I’m glad that you came back.” He makes his way over to a bench and sets her down. “You will stay after that heals, right?” _

_ She works a muscle in her jaw before nodding. “I suppose.”  _

_ “Good.” He tucks her bangs behind her ears. “I like having you around. Wu Jing has been much more interesting since you got here.” _

_ She manages a faint smile. Atsu makes a gagging noise which she makes a point of ignoring. “Thank you, Hajime.” _

_ That night she learns what it is to forgive. _

_ To be forgiven. _

  
  


**.oOo.**

They treat her surprisingly well, most everyone does, despite most of them having horrid final encounters with her before her disappearance. The servants still talk pleasantly with her as they comb her hair and wash her face. The guards greet her with bows and warm smiles. Advisors speak to her as though they had never witnessed the degradation of her mind. They insist that they are happy to see that she is doing better. Happy to see her in general.

She doesn’t know why she is still unhappy. 

No, that isn’t true. As they paint her nails and rub pretty fragrances onto her skin, she knows that her heart is still aching for something so much simpler. Aching for something that she could have had. Something that had so quickly become just one more thing that was stolen from her. 

Dread is little help and Agni knows that her nerves are completely frayed with it. Zuko’s promise of the best dumplings she’d ever taste does nothing when anxiety sapps her appetite away. 

Her final encounter with Mai and TyLee was even more tragic than any that she had with the palace staff.

One of them tilts her chin up and gives an approving smile. “You’re ready for the day, princess.” And they send her on her way, leaving her to do whatever it is that she does. And that day what she does is steal away into her room and lie down. 

Granted she tried to do some reading first, but her eyes merely skimmed over the words as her brain raced somewhere else entirely. She clasps her hands just below her chest and stares at the ceiling until laying on her back is no longer comfortable. 

Zuko sends for her nearly a half an hour later. Making her way down the hall is somehow more daunting than venturing from Chin to Yon Rah and from there to Capital City. Everyone is seated, and probably have been seated for a while, by the time she finds her own. Zuko sits at the head of the table with Mai under his arm. TyLee has the first seat on the left side of the table and Sokka has the right. The urge to take the seat all the way at the other end of the table is enthralling and she almost does. She might have if Sokka hadn’t waved her over. 

She lingers for a moment before muttering, “you’re in my spot.” 

“Your spot?”   
  


“Correct, I have been sitting there since I was a child.” But it is disconcerting to see Zuko sitting where her father always has. Sokka stands and lets her have her seat. 

“You’re really going to make a fuss about where you sit?” Mai comments. “You’re lucky that you get to sit here at all.”

She shrugs, she isn’t sure that it is luck at all. Mostly, she thinks that it is a mistake.    
  


“I don’t mind.” Sokka replies. 

Azula jabs at her dumplings but can’t clear the flutter out of her stomach long enough to do anymore than that. She remembers eating dumplings in Chin. She remembers that they weren’t hot enough and they were rather dry but they were made with caring hands…

She remembers dinners. 

Dinners that weren’t uncomfortable. 

Happy dinners. 

Not particularly satisfying meals, but Agni, the conversation was enough to keep the drab tastes from her mind. 

“How are things with the Kyoshi Warriors?” She tries. 

TyLee hesitates, “they’re going well.”

“What do you do?” 

“Well right now Suki and I have been helping guard Zuko during travels and sometimes Aang.” 

“There are certain threats that they had to constantly look out for.” Mai gives her a pointed stare.

Azula nods. Her mood dips and she takes to forcing herself to eat her dumplings.

Sokka lets her get several bites in before asking, “why don’t you tell us what you have been up to, Azula?” 

“I’ve been up to a lot’a...” She clears her throat. “A lot of things, I suppose.” Sokka furrows his brows at her and she isn’t sure of exactly what he is trying to convey. 

“Did you meet anyone interesting?” Sokka asks. 

Her heart clenches. “Several, yes.” 

“Why don’t you tell us about one of them?”

She isn’t sure that she wants to open old wounds. She sifts through her mind for something that isn’t so painful. “There was this Swamp by Chin village. I went there because...someone I knew wanted to see it. I didn’t particularly want to go to a swamp.” She pauses. There were these men, they wore leaves and nothing but. They tried to hunt and eat Dàxiyi.”

“Dàxiyi?” TyLee tilts her head. 

“My mongoose-lizard.” Azula answers. “I only left him alone for a moment to move a tree branch out of the way.” 

Sokka laughs, “classic ambush tactic.”

Azula shakes her head. “They weren’t that smart, Sokkka. They took Dàxiyi and when I found him I demanded that they gave him back. They pretended like they hadn’t seen him, threw a pile of leaves over his head, and said, ‘see, lady, ain’t no lizard-goose here’. They just got lucky.” 

“Did you...get him back?” Zuko inquires. 

“Yes, after chasing them through the swamp for several hours. Turns out that they could bend vines and swamp water and they knew exactly where to go and hide.”

“Oh you must have met Due and Tho!” Sokka declares. “They tried to hunt Appa!”

“Yes.” Azula nods. “That sounds right.”

“How did you catch them?” TyLee asks.

“I didn’t…” She trails off. “One of the people I was traveling with did. There was a third man, the one who could bend the vines, he invited us to stay for dinner?”

“And?”

“It was the worst food I had ever eaten.” She pauses. “They cooked it in swamp water.” She crinkles her nose. She is almost certain that she had swallowed a good clump of mud that night. 

“You didn’t try to burn their village for stealing your mongoose-lizard.” 

Azula jabs at her dumpling again. “No sense in that.”

“Right, you probably found something worse to do.”

“I didn’t do anything to them. I took my mongoose-lizard and went home.” She finishes her dumpling and pushes the plate aside. “I’ll be in my bedroom.” Even after all of this time, after everything, she still can’t bring herself to let her walls down. She wonders if she has learned anything at all. Perhaps it is that her travels truly have amounted to nothing but loss and more failed potential. 

She pushes her chair in. 

**.oOo.**

“Azula, wait.” 

“For what, Zuzu. I’m finished.” 

“I’d like to hear another story.”

“I don’t have anymore.”

“Why don’t you tell us about the people you went to the swamp with? He suggests.

Sokka notices her clutching the fabric of her pants under the table “There isn’t much to tell. They went to the Swamp with me and we parted ways.” 

“What about other people that you met?” He asks. He isn’t sure that he is making things any easier for her. He likes to think that he is.

“I never stayed with any of them for longer than a few days. A week at most.”

Sokka opens his mouth and closes it once more.  _ “I have more waiting for me in the Spirit World than I do here.”  _ In his mind’s eye, her lips move, softly spilling subtle sorrows. And he wonders if he has just pushed her into a painful situation. His stomach lolls.

“So you did all of that traveling and you didn’t find one person that you actually cared about?” Mai quirks a brow. 

“Not one.”

But her eyes, those sad, weary eyes...

“People are disposable to you, aren’t they. Once they serve their purpose they don’t mean a thing.” 

He almost asks her what she meant by her Spirit World comment, if she hadn’t met anyone worth caring for. Decidedly, that is just swapping one uncomfortable conversation for another. 

“What are you staring at?” She mutters. 

“I uh…I just…” he sputters as he fights to think of a safer conversational topic. “Where did you get that necklace, it’s well crafted?” Her eyes widen, if only briefly, and he knows that he has just asked another jarring question. “Someone gave it to you, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, it was a gift.” She answers so quietly that she might as well have not spoken at all. 

“So you did have someone you cared about?” TyLee blinks. 

“Why didn’t you just say that?” Zuko asks.

“I don’t want to tell such a long story right now.” 

**.oOo.**

Because it hurts. It hurts so badly. Badly and mightily enough for it to occupy her mind for the rest of an already agonizing dinner. Badly enough for it to follow her back to her bedroom. Terribly enough for her to feel queasy. Terribly enough for the pangs of loss to send phantom twitches along her scar. 

She tightly holds the stuffed badger-mole to her chest. Her fingers bunch around its discolored cloth as other fingers have done so many times before. She considers, not for the first time, tracking those men down. Every single one of them.

Yes that is what she should do. Now that dinner has gone as dreadfully as she had anticipated, she should leave the palace and seek them out….

“Hey.” Sokka greets sheepishly. 

Azula’s grip tightens. “What do you want?”

**.oOo.**

“To say that I didn’t mean to bring that up.” He mutters. His tummy flutters and flops incessantly. It hasn’t even been a week and he has already crunched several of the eggshells he has been walking on, severed whatever delicate thread he’d formed with her. “I just thought that it was something you bought from some vendor…”

Azula sits up and he notices the badger-mole in her lap. His heart seizes all over again.

“I also wanted to tell you that they aren’t mad…” 

“Not mad?” She scoffs. 

“They aren’t.” He insists. “I think that they know that you have to...get used to things.” 

“You said it yourself, I’m not easy to have conversations with.” She rubs her fingers over the worn fabric of the badger-mole. 

“It’s just that you have a lot of secrets.” 

“And why does everyone want to know them?”

He thinks for a moment, “well why don’t you want to tell us about the people you met?”

Her fingers clench around one of the badger-mole’s stuffed paws. 

“That was a stupid question, wasn’t it?” He asks. “I guess I wouldn’t want to talk about something like that either. But it could help, you know? To talk about the people you lost, so they won’t be forgotten.” 

“Sokka.” Her voice dips, but he can’t detect any malice or bite. He sees something flash behind her eyes, something he can’t quite decipher. 

“Alright, I’ll go...” 

She catches him by the wrist, “not yet.”

He cringes and wonders what kind of earful he is in for. 

“I…” she strokes the badger-mole. “I don’t want to be alone right now.” 

**.oOo.**

She doesn’t want to be alone ever again. Perhaps she is struggling to retain most of what she has learned in her travels. But, Agni, she can’t forget that very first lesson. The bed dips and some of the disquiet and dread dissipates.

“Okay.” Sokka smiles. “You don’t have to be alone.” 

She can’t bring herself to talk anymore. She doesn’t have the words. Maybe there simply aren’t any. Not ones that can truly express how deep the hollow spaces in her heart run. How cold and vacant it is where warmth had once been. And what a laughably short lifespan that warmth had. 

She doesn’t talk anymore. She only holds the badger-mole close to her. 

But Sokka doesn’t leave. 

For some reason, he doesn’t leave. 


	9. Accenting Change

_ She sees him standing at the edge of the garden. She thinks that he has probably been there for quite some time. She can’t say just when he’d gotten there having been so absurdly invested in this one stubborn turnip. She has gotten this far without getting so much as a smudge on her face and she would like to keep it that way, for once. She huffs and, without taking her eyes off of Hajime, gives it one more sturdy pull. It gives way with more force than she had anticipated and she is thrown back. She lands in the dirt with a soft thud and a wince. _

_ She hears Hajime stifle a snorting laugh before leaping over the fence and holding out his hand. She ignores it, stands herself up, and brushes off her pants.  _

_ “You alright?”  _

_ “Perfect.” She mutters. “Where’s Atsu.” The boy would have been howling with laughter.  _

_ “With Caihong and her father.” _

_ “Wong-Fin is supposed to be here. Helping me.” She frowns.  _

_ “He said that you told him last night that you didn’t need his help and that you are more than capable of harvesting this whole damn garden yourself.” _

_ Azula slightly purses her lips. “Yes, I said was capable, not that I wanted to.”  _

_ Hajime quirks a brow. “Well, ‘I don’t need your help’, sure is a funny way of saying that you don’t want to work alone.” He leans back against the fence.  _

_ She presses her lips together and wraps her fingers around the leaves of another turnip. It is a hot day. Her stomach gives a little flutter; since when has she ever thought the Earth Kingdom to be hot place. The turnip leaves nearly slip from her fingers. She gives it a pluck and it comes up roots and all.  _

_ Roots. _

_ She is losing hers.  _

_ She chucks the vegetable into the wheelbarrow without turning around. _

_ “Nice throw.” Hajime comments.  _

_ She absently reaches for the next turnip. She wonders doesn’t know why she is so upset, isn’t that what she has been wanting? To slowly shed her roots until there is nothing left of them? But now that the first signs of them browning and curling have shown up, she isn’t so certain.  _

_ “You alright?” Hajime asks. _

_ She shakes her head. “Fine. I’m just…”  _

_ “Overworking yourself?” He asks.  _

_ “Perhaps a little.”  _

_ “Here, let me.”  _

_ “Ojihara will…” _

_ “Just be happy to know that the job is getting done. Actually, he doesn’t have to pay me so he’ll probably love this.”  _

_ “Yes, if you do it right.” _

_ “How hard can plucking a turnip be?” _

_ What an innocent man he is. “Take a basket.” She gestures to them. “And once we finish with the turnips we have to get the radishes and the carrots and…” she sighs. “My hands are going to be so rough by the time I’m done.” _

_ He takes one of her grimy hands and runs a finger over her palm. “They’re still pretty soft.”  _

_ “Yes. I said that they won’t be when I’m through with this garden.”  _

_ He tilts his head. She can sense him observing her as she fusses with the next few turnips. After a fifth comes free she tosses a glance over her shoulder. “What?”  _

_ He shrugs. “Just trying to figure out where you come from. I don’t know many people who have ever had the luxury of worrying about having soft hands.” _

_ Said hands tense around the turnip. She curses herself inwardly for another careless slip up.  _

_ “It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me. It’s probably bad enough having Atsu constantly digging for answers.”  _

_ “He’s fine.”  _

_ “That’s not what you said when we first met.”  _

_ “I didn’t say that he wasn’t fine. I said that he is unruly and undisciplined and I stand by that.” She shrugs. “But he also believes me when I tell him that I was born in the woods and fought four sabertooth moose-lions at once.” _

_ “In his defense, I feel like you very well could have taken on at least two.” He pauses. “I guess that explains why he’s been begging me to ask you to take him moose-lion hunting.”  _

_ “I already told him no.”  _

_ “He’s very persistent.”  _

_ “Undisciplined.” She corrects. _

_ Hajime rolls his eyes and she wonders if she is pressing her luck. She wishes that she could shake this habit of antagonizing people who mean her no harm at all. People who, she looks at a fully harvested turnip garden, only help her. “I’m not good at this.”  _

_ “Not good at this? You’ve only been here for about an hour and we have the turnips completely harvested.” _

_ She shakes her head. “I’m not good at being…” sociable, friendly, warm, lovable. “A nice person.”  _

_ “What are you talking about?” _

_ He has been here this whole time and she can’t even swallow her pride enough to  _ truly  _ thank him for his help. “You’re tired of me telling you how to raise your son.” _

_ He slightly purses his lips and tilts his head as if to indicate ‘so-so’, “eh, a little bit, yes.”  _

_ She makes her way towards the radishes and he follows along.  _

_ “You know what’s good about being a dad?” He asks when she doesn’t reply. “It teaches you patience.”  _

_ “Are you...comparing  _ me  _ to a  _ child _?”  _

_ He laughs, “I guess, sort of. Yeah. Children also don’t really regard how others feel, they just say what they think.” He shifts his weight. “For all of your secrets, you’re very forthright.”  _

_ She doesn’t think that this is a compliment. “I’m not a child. I know how to curb my tongue.”  _

_ “But you don’t know  _ which  _ things to curb.” _

_ He isn’t exactly wrong. _

_ “I guess it’s more like, I don’t know...sometimes you just say things that are…” he looks upwards. “Offhanded.”  _

_ “Yes.” She agrees. “As I said, I am not good at this. And that is why I like being alone.” She yanks a radish free. “That’s why I should be alone. I don’t like it.”  _

_ “You shouldn’t be alone.” He says. “You should talk to more people until it starts coming easier.” He smiles.  _

_ “You’re the first person who’s willing to put up with it.” _

_ “The first, maybe. But not the only person. He might not seem it, but old man Oji will. He’ll fuss and argue. He might tell you not to come back on his doorstep ever again but when you knock the next time, he’ll let you in.”  _

_ Her fingers curl around the pendant hanging from her neck.  _

_ “What’s that?” _

_ “Ojihara gave it to me. An apology present.” She stoops back down and the necklace falls forward, glinting in the light as it swings about. _

_ Hajime smiles. “See my point?” _

_ She rises from her crouch and releases the radish. “I might.” She gives a soft pant and wipes her forehead. She thinks that she has only added dirt to the mix.  _

_ He stares at her for some time. She fidgets with the necklace before turning back to her work.  _

_ “You’re pretty.”  _

_ Her face colors some.  _

_ “And your son didn’t come from nowhere.”  _

_ “You might not be nice but I know that you’re not a bad person.” He remarks. “I wouldn’t be flirting with other women if his mother was still around.”  _

_ Her face colors further. It would seem as though she hasn’t been reading things to deeply, over analyzing them to the point her head hurt. And by Agni, she wishes that she were. _

_ “Oh, man.” He rubs the back of his head. “I came on a bit strong, didn’t I?” _

_ She shakes her head. No stronger than she would have came on, anyhow. But that doesn’t mean she is comfortable with it. It doesn’t mean that she is entirely off put either.  _

_ “I know that you’ve only been around for a few weeks and that we spent the first one bickering…” _

_ He thinks that she is pretty. With sweat slicked at her brow and mud caked on her face and clinging in clumps to her disheveled hair. He thinks that she is pretty. That she is worth being patient for. _

_ “Thank you.” She mutters before she loses the compulsion to say it.  _

_ “For making you hate this village for the first week?” _

_ She rolls her eyes. For making her feel like she has a chance. For making her feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. For not writing her off after a whole week of snubbing, judging, and resenting. For patience. “For helping me with the turnips.” _

_ He laughs, “ _ that’s _ what you want to thank me for?” _

_ She opens her mouth but only nods. She thinks that he knows that it is more than that. Somehow he knows.  _

_ “I know that you’re busy with the harvest. But, once it’s over, I’d like spend more time with you. Atsu does too. We can attend the harvest festival.”  _

_ She swallows. He is getting much too close and in such a short span of time. She still has to get to Chin. She shouldn’t let herself get tethered down and attached to someone like him. Someone with a genuinely kind soul. The sort that hers isn’t compatible with for any other reason than corrupting it. She has acquired more than enough coin to last her through the year, she ought to leave in the morning. “I’ve never been to a harvest festival…” _

_ She hasn’t said yes but his face lights up and she can’t bring herself to steal it away after sowing it, however unwittingly. “I suppose this one would be a good place to start.” _

_ “You’ll love it.” He promises. His hand wraps around her and he squeezes. “It’ll be a chance for you to socialize some more.” _

_ “If you say so.” _

_ She’s never really been hugged before. Not in a long while. Not like this. If only Ojihara hadn’t clamored down the porch steps, demanding that she start giving the radishes that much attention.  _

_ “I’ll see you at the festival.” _

_ She nods.  _

_ And now it is a promise.  _

_ That day she learns what it means to be gracious.  _

**.oOo.**

At first she thinks that it is just her. But it isn’t, Capital City is larger. There are walkways that weren't there before and stores that she has never shopped at. Granted she has never done much shopping for herself before fleeing, but she doesn’t recognize these ones.

“It’s different, Sokka.” 

“You like it?”

“Not at all.”

The world has moved on without her. Somehow she always imagined that the world would come to a standstill for her. Afterall, how could a nation function without its princess. She supposes she isn’t nearly as important as she had imagined.

She had been important to someone. Several someones. She was for a short blissful burst. She is once again important to no one. 

“Are you okay?”

“Why do you ask?” 

“I don’t know you just…” He trails off. “Your eyes.”

“What about them?”

“They always look so sad. You used to be…”

Powerful, bold, lucky. She used to have a promising future. At the very least she had an illusion of potential. She isn’t so sure that her luck was ever genuine. How could it have been when so much was missing. How could it be when those things are missing again. 

“Are you sure that you don’t want to talk about it?”

She nods quite vigorously, as though she can shake the blood soaked memories from her head. “Let’s just…” she gestures to a food cart. “What do you want?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

She sets a few coins on the wooden countertop. “Two servings of rice balls, extra spice.”

“Okay, take some spice off of one of those!” Sokka calls to the cook. 

Azula rolls her eyes. “You really can’t handle a little spice?”

“I can’t handle  _ extra  _ spice.” 

Azula shrugs. “Most people can’t.” Hajime could.

The cook comes back with their rice balls. She takes a bit and closes her eyes, they water some as the spices tickle her nose. How she has missed that burning tingle in the back of her throat. She will have to build her tolerance up again. 

“They’re too spicy for you too!” Sokka jabs. 

“Are not.” She grumbles. She damn near shoves the rest of the rice balls into her mouth just to prove a point. She might have were she still in the Earth Kingdom. In the Fire Nation she has more dignity than that. “They’re spiced perfectly to my liking.” 

“Then why is your face red?”

“Because you are aggravating and it’s making me angry.” 

He cringes and her stomach plummets. There is a new burning tickle in her throat. She misses when people can tell when she is only jesting. “You’re still afraid of me.” 

“N-no.” His stutter doesn’t help his lie. “Maybe a little.” He confesses. “It’s just hard for me to…”

“Tell when I’m actually unhappy.” 

“Yeah.” He rubs the back of his head. 

“I’ll make it easy for you. I am unhappy more often than not.” She is almost never happy. 

“Well if you ever want to get it off of your chest…” 

She almost does. The story and its memories runs circles in her mind. The words are always there waiting at the very edge of her tongue. But the fact remains that he is still one of several people that she has tormented in the past. And yet his eyes offer nothing but earnest warmth.

She has learned to forgive and be forgiven. She doesn’t understand why she is afraid to put this lesson to use. 

And then she does understand; she has learned another more profound lesson and it has led her to a darkness like no other. 

“Thanks for the offer.”

“But you’re declining?”

“I am.” 

“Alright.” 

“You’re not going to push it?”

“I’m just glad that you’re giving me a chance at all, even if I ask too many questions.” He laughs. “To be honest, I don’t know what made you decide to do that.”

She doesn’t tell him that it’s because he didn’t leave her. Agni knows what she would have done if he left her alone that night. She shrugs, “I need someone to talk to and you’re willing.” 

She hears a chuckle from behind. “You’re willing.” He repeats. She thinks that she recognizes him. She has seen him at several war meetings in the past. He is older now, his hair greyer. “Can you repeat what you just said?”

“For what?” 

“Just humor me, princess.”

She crinkles her nose. “I’m your princess, not an entertainer.”

The general chuckles again. “Yer. Yer princess.” He repeats again. “It’s always a shame when culture slips away. And from such an embodiment of our nation. What happened to you, princess?”

“Nothing that I can’t make happen to you, if I so please.”

“Nothin’...” The man’s mouth is caught between a sneer and a grin. “Nothin’...” he tsks. “I did hear it going around that you have spent much time in the Earth Kingdom. Welcome home princess, you should probably work on -re-assimilating.”

“I can have you cast to the lowest rings of the Earth Kingdom. I can name several slums suitable for you.” 

“Have you lived in them, princess? Groveled in them?”

She gives a haunty sniff. “My lodgings were comfortable.” Very comfortable. Perhaps warmer and cozier than anything she has ever found here. “And, by all means, I have taken well to living in luxury again.” She sweeps a generous curtain of expertly groomed hair over her shoulders. A waft of citrus ebbs from her tresses. She wishes that she truly has readjusted as well as she boasts. “The palace does fit me, wouldn’t you say?” She crosses one leg over the other and fixes him with a smirk that doesn’t breach any further than the surface. And that might just be exactly why he takes a step back with a stumbled, “of course, princess.” 

She waves him off with a lazy flick of her wrist. 

“You uh...haven’t lost your touch.” 

Part of her wishes that she has.

**.oOo.**

“I suppose that, that’s agreeable.” Sokka hears her conclude. 

Mostly, the conversation seems to be going well for her, minus a rather stiff manner of speaking.

“You’re talking to your friends, Azula.” Zuko laughs. “You don’t have to be so formal.” 

Azula rubs her hands over her face. When she brings them down again it reveals a face riddled with confusion. It is almost endearing. Sokka can’t remember her ever being so expressive. “But they aren’t. We just agreed that we aren’t friends yet.” 

This time it is TyLee who laughs. “Maybe we should show her some mercy, Mai?”

“You can.” Mai grumbles. “Friendship is earned and it’s going to take more than a few bewildered expressions. A lot more.”

Azula shifts in her chair. 

“Mai.” TyLee says as the woman stands. 

“It’s fine, TyLee.” She shifts again. “I understand. I think.” 

“Well it’s progress, right?” Zuko asks. 

“Yeah...yes, sure, progress.” 

And then it strikes him. It strikes him that it isn’t just a stiffness in her voice…

He waits for Zuko and TyLee to stand up and leave; TyLee to fetch some pajamas and Zuko to spend some quiet time with Mai. Azula rises from her chair. “Did you enjoy the performance, you can’t get entertainment like that from the Ember Island Players.” 

“Not really, Azula.” He is well aware that it is only a rather dry joke but it falls short, swept away by the distress that birthed it. “It’s hard to watch someone force something.”

“It wasn’t forced.” Azula frowns. “I meant all of those things.” 

He gives a sad laugh. “I know. That’s not what I’m talking about. I was expecting that to be all kinds of awkward. I didn’t expect you to care so much about that general.”

She furrows her brows.

“You don’t have to force it, I’m sure that after you’ve been here and around it for a while you’ll have your old accent back.” He pauses. “But until then, I kind of like your new one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a blend of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation nobility speak before.” It’s unique. It’s her. A more authentic her. He’d wager that Zuko no longer hears his father in her voice. “If you ask me, it’s like keeping a little piece of...of everything. Of where you’ve been and who you’ve talked to.” Of change. He thinks that maybe, just listening to her speak has reassured him. That, that might be, at least in part, why he has been so quick to open up to her. 

A muscle in her jaw works. “A piece of everything, huh?”

He nods. 

“Maybe yer right. I’ll think about it, Sokka.” 

He doesn’t think that she will. Even if she doesn’t know it, he thinks that she has already decided. 


	10. A Story A Night

_ “That one!” Atsu shouts. “I want that one!” _

_ “It’s not for sale, Atsu. You’re going to have to win it.” Hajime says.  _

_ “But...but I’m no good at tossing games.”  _

_ Hajime ruffles his hair, “you’re great at it.” _

_ He shakes his head. “Nu-uh, last year Caihong said that I’d do it better if I turned around and threw it backwards.” _

_ “New year, new skills! Give it a try.” He gives Atsu a pat on the shoulders and a few coins. _

_ “You aren’t going to teach him how to do it?” Azula asks.  _

_ “You just throw a bag full of beans into a hole, he just has to practice.” _

_ She watches the boy chuck the bag with all of his might, overshooting the hole by several feet. His next throw is weak to compensate and the bag doesn’t fall too far from where he stands. His third shot is too far to the right and so his fourth throw is significantly left. He stops his foot and carelessly throws the last bag.  _

_ The straw-stuffed badger-mole still hangs on the hook.  _

_ “Dad! You do it!” Before Hajime can answer he changes direction. Azula is none to pleased with this change. He stares at her with that gap toothed grin. “Rikka can do it!” _

_ “I don’t want to play a silly game.” Azula folds her arms over her chest.  _

_ Hajime laughs, “you’re at a festival. Festivals are all about silly and rigged games.” _

_ “Just because you can’t win, doesn’t mean that they are rigged.” She holds a pointer up as if to accent her point. _

_ He nudges her, “if it’s not rigged, go win.” _

_ Atsu tugs on her sleeve. “Please Rikka, please! I’ll...I’ll…” He lightly knocks his head with his fist, “Caihong and I’ll make you a pie!” _

_ “A pie? What flavor?” _

_ “Uhhh. Chocolate?” _

_ “You’re going to get the chocolate from the garden, aren’t you?” _

_ “A flower pot actually…” He mumbles.  _

_ “I don’t eat dirt.” _

_ “I do! It’s not that bad if you get it from the flower pots especially if you find those teeny rolly bugs that get all...rolly when you poke at them like this!” He jabs her in the side with his tiny, pudgy finger.  _

_ “I’ll pass.” She grumbles as she watches Hajime fail to land any of the bags into the hole.  _

_ “Please win it for me, please, please, please, please phu-leeese…” _

_ “These games are for children. I am not a child.” _

_ “What? Are there better uses for your talents?” Hajime quirks a brow.  _

_ “Yes! Yes, exactly. I am glad that you understand…” she glances at him and realizes that he, in fact, does not understand at all. She very nearly pouts.  _

_ “Com’on Rikka!” Atsu whines. “Com’on, com’on, com’on!” He pleads until the words blend into one steady stream.  _

_ “No.” _

_ “Look at his face, Rikka.”  _

_ She has. It is gap-toothed, bug-eyed, and pudgy. The same as every child she ever set her eyes upon.  _

_ “How can you say no to that face?” _

_ “Cooooommmme ooooon, Riiikaaaa.” _

_ “Not a chance.” She folds her arms tighter.  _

_ “You’re his only hope, Rikka. He gets his hand-eye coordination from his dad.” _

_ “Yes,” she agrees, “you’re both awful at this.”  _

_ “Well why don’t you grace all of us with your fantastic bean toss skills, master.” _

_ Azula gives a haughty sniff. “Fine. But only so the both of you know that it isn’t so hard.” _

**_.oOo._ **

_ He hasn’t put it down since she’d won it for him. Day to day the badger-mole has a different name. At first it was ‘Duster’ and then it was ‘Mud Muncher’ and after that it was, ‘Caihong the Second’. She isn’t sure which name has been bestowed upon the toy today but she has a sinking feeling that it has something to do with her name and is doubly glad that she is using a false one.  _

_ The boy comes prancing up to her. “I’m going to show Misa and Min, Dáxiyi!” _

_ “Dáxiyi?” _

_ Atsu nods, “your mongoose-lizard.” _

_ “You named my mongoose-lizard?” _

_ “You said that you didn’t!”  _

_ Azula rolls her eyes, “and who are Misa and Min?” _

_ “Neighbor’s kids.” Hajime says as the boy rushes outside. “How are things going at Ojihara’s?” _

_ “Well enough.” Azula replies. Nevermind that Caihong’s father has been tirelessly pestering her for details of her past to the point she is considering calling off their dinner date. “Seukhyung asks too many questions.”  _

_ “You do realize that going out to dinner is all about questions and getting to know someone, right?”  _

_ Azula frowns, her stomach tying itself in knots. “Why would he want to do that?” She wonders if she is being pursued. Surely she has been in this village long enough to have attracted attention. Golden eyes stand starkly out amid shades of green. _

_ “Because he likes you. And his daughter does too. And his old man…” _

_ “In other words, I should tell him that dinner is cancelled and that he will not be interrogating me over lukewarm miso soup and mochi.” _

_ Hajime laughs. “In other words, give him a chance. Just let him do all of the talking if you don’t want to.” He tilts his head. “You do realize what this dinner is, right?” _

_ “Why do you think that I wouldn’t?”  _

_ “You did imply, the other day, that you have trouble understanding people.”  _

_ “I understand people perfectly. I just don’t know how to connect with them. I know that he…” _

_ “Loves you?”  _

_ She nods. “I think.”  _

_ “Well then, take him to dinner and see how it goes.”  _

_ “I will.” _

_ He nods, “I figured that you would.” _

_ “You sound disappointed.” _

_ “No!” He says too quickly. “I told you that I wanted to help you socialize more. I just didn’t expect you to... catch on so quickly.” _

_ But she truly hasn’t. “And?” _

_ “And what?” _

_ “There’s something you aren’t saying. What else didn’t you expect?” _

_ He rubs his hands over his face. _

_ “Why would you think that there’s something else?” _

_ “Because I understand people perfectly.”  _

_.oOo. _

_ Seukhyung takes her hand and leads her into the eatery, a fine place really. Small but fine, with walls of bamboo sticks and a burbling fountain at the very center. All about the place are hanging ivys and pots that spill colorful leaves and petals. “Here.” He helps her into her seat. “I’ll have the waiter light these,” he gestures to the candles. _

_ Azula quirks a brow. _

_ He laughs, “right, I’m used to dating Earth Kingdom women.” _

_ “Clearly.” Azula cups the lotus shaped candle in her palms and lights it up. She waits for the flame to warm into a shade of orange before putting it back in place.  _

_ “So uh…” he clears his throat. “So, what was life like back in the Fire Nation? Is everyone as competitive and passionate as you are?” _

_ She shakes her head. “In the Fire Nation you either have the spark or you don’t. You’re either bold or useless.” _

_ “Sounds harsh.” _

_ She shrugs.  _

_ “No wonder you left.” He rubs the back of his head. “I wouldn’t want to deal with that sort of pressure. It’s like, no wonder Fire Nation soldiers are so ruthless and cruel.” _

_ Azula swallows. The waiter finally makes his appearance. “Miso soup add some spice to it.” _

_ “And I’ll have the roast duck and pau buns.” He pauses and turns to her, “you said spicy right? Have you ever tried spicy pickled kelp?”  _

_ She shakes her head.  _

_ “A real delicacy!” Seukhyun exclaims. “I’ll split one with you, if you’d like.”  _

_ “That sounds just fine.” If she doesn’t like it he can eat the whole thing, she supposes.  _

_ “Anyways, what was I saying?” _

_ “That firebenders are monsters?” _

_ “N-no! That’s not what I meant. Just the military types and the rich folk.” _

_ Azula gazes into the candle’s flickering flame. “Right…” _

_ “But you’re not like that. I can tell.” He smiles. “I was able to see it when you gave Caihong that turnip.”  _

_ She rolls her eyes. She isn’t quite sure if her laugh is resentful or genuinely humored. “You’re still on about that? It was one, little, scrap of a turnip.”  _

_ “It’s the small deeds that show a person’s true nature. That’s what my old man told me. That little turnip had Caihong smiling for days, you know. It was the best turnip she ever ate.”  _

_ This time she is certain that her little laugh is genuine. “Well of course. It was touched by my hand, afterall.”  _

_ He chuckles, “you’re something else.” _

_ “A good something?”  _

_ He cups his hand over hers, “I wouldn’t have asked you for a date if I thought that you were a bad something. I’m so glad that my old man took Caihong off of my hands tonight.” _

_ “Why’s that?”  _

_ He laughs, “it’s a little less romantic to have her yanking on my sleeve all night, don’t you think?”  _

_ She shrugs, Hajime seems to manage just fine.  _

_ “I haven’t had a date since I lost Cai’s mother.”  _

_ “What happened to her?” She asks.  _

_ “Same thing that happened to a lot of wives here. Bunch of Earth Kingdom soldiers came up here and when we refused to let them turn Wu Jing into a military camp...people died, Rikka, a lot of people.” He pauses. “Fire Nation soldiers aren’t the only brutal ones. I haven’t met any soldier who was pleasant for conversation.” _

_ Her stomach sinks. She can’t help but wonder how far she would have gone, had her pre-destined path not been so rudely blocked. She doesn’t have to wonder for long at all, not knowing full and well that she had told her father to charr the entirety of the Earth Kingdom. Knowing that she took pride in her suggestion. She pictures Wu Jing under a wave of fire streaming from her father’s hand. Ojihara, Seukhyung, Caihong, Atsu, Hajime, all of them burning to ash. “Yes, you’re probably right about that.”  _

_ She takes the first taste of the spicy pickled kelp. It isn’t spicy at all. _

_ “Well, what do you think?” _

_ “It’s fine.” _

_ Azula was almost certain that she would never know the feeling... _

_ She hates it. _

_ She resents it. _

_ It leaves her stomach queasy, but that night she learns what it is to feel shame, regret. _

**.oOo.**

Her voice is strangely soothing. A bizarre patchwork of Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom and he almost ravenously enjoys how pleasantly it plays through his ears. She isn’t talking about anything in particular. Mostly it is small talk with a sprinkle every now and again about how she is surprised to be receiving such a generally positive welcome home. 

“You’re their princess.” He says. “Of course they’re happy to have you back.”

“But did I really do them any favors while I was here?”

He nods. “I think that you did, or you did at the time.” He tries to get his thoughts together. “And I think that they agree. The problem isn’t that you didn’t do any favors it’s that those things aren’t considered good deeds anymore. Times change, what seemed like a helping the Fire Nation at the time isn’t so helpful after all.”

She fixes him with the dullest stare he has seen in a while.

“But I think that they know that you meant well, right? You’re not the only Fire National who has been doing some reflection. This whole nation is…”

“Doing some horrifying introspection.” Azula mutters. “Some things can’t be fixed, Sokka. Maybe some cultures are worse than others...” 

“Where is this coming from?”

“Thinking too much. I suppose.” 

“Firebenders aren’t evil.” He smiles. “You aren’t.” 

She quirks a skeptical brow. 

“Do evil people carry around stuffed badger-moles?”

Azula’s face flushes as she snatches it back. “Apparently, yes.” 

**.oOo.**

Azula buries her nose in the badger-mole’s fabric. It smells faintly of turnip of dirt and of home. It smells of affection and care. If she inhales deeply enough she swears that she is whisked to that place for some time. 

Whisked back to a home where the scent of freshly baked bread was a morning starter and vegetable stew closed the night.

She holds her hand to her belly. She feels cold to her core. 

Things could have been fine. They could have been fulfilling, whole. Instead she finds the hollowness of a spoiled harvest, lush and flourishing on the surface but rotting beneath. 

She gives a small jerk when she feels hands on her soldiers. “Hey. Are you still with me.”

Azula nods, “mostly.” 

“You were…”

“Thinking.” She replies. “Just thinking.”

He nods and she isn’t sure that he believes her. 

“I’m not crazy.” 

“I didn’t say that you were.” He promises. “But ‘not crazy’ doesn’t rule ‘not okay’ out.” 

She swallows. 

“I think that you can use…” He wiggles his brows and pulls out a mahjong set, “a distraction!”

“Sokka…”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. A game night! Me, you, Zuko, Mai, and TyLee.” He beams. “I happen to be a mahjong master.” 

“Is that right?” 

“It sure is!”

“I’ll pass.”

“Oh come on, you’ll have fun.” 

“It’s a silly game, Sokka.”

“I get it, you have to save your brainpower for something more important.” 

Her throat runs dry. “What did you say?”

Sokka tenses, only briefly, but long enough. “I was just saying that you just don’t want to play because I am a mahjong master and you don’t want to lose in front of ever.”

Azula sniffs. “Invite the entire palace staff, I’ll win.”

**.oOo.**

She was smiling. It had reached her eyes at multiple points during their game--mostly when she was near victory--but he can’t say that she is unbothered. Raava’s tendrils he wishes that she would just tell him what is wrong. What happened to her, who she lost, and how. 

And Raava’s light he doesn’t know why or when he started to care so much. He has a suspicion that, knowingly or not, it had been the moment she stumbled back into the palace with a story and a collection of scars. 

He supposes that it is a compulsion to understand to know just what could have sparked such a stark change. No, he realizes, it isn’t so stark at all. Everything that made Azula, Azula is still there. He thinks that it is more of an addition; a newfound capacity for empathy and care. 

He sighs to himself, his impulse decisions usually lead him to distress and disarray. But when he hears that small laugh, he isn’t quite so sure that, that will be the case this time. He is almost entirely sure when the game is packed away and she mutters, “I suppose that your ideas aren’t so awful after all. Tonight reminded me of...special moments. It almost felt the same.” 

He isn’t so sure if that is melancholic or pleasent. “Special moments?”

She nods. 

“You ever going to talk about those?”

She strokes the head of the badger-mole as she considers. “I went to a festival once.” 

Her voice is so soft. Soothing. The very prospect of finally hearing a story where he can savor every syllable, every annunciation, is enticing. So much so that he finds it startling. He hadn’t expected to be so intensely and suddenly enthralled by the princess. But he supposes that he does have a history of falling intensely and abruptly. Quite frankly, it scares him. Truly, he only meant to reach out a comforting hand, to pursue a friendship and nothing more. 

Changed or not, she is still Azula. Azula with all of her history and baggage. Azula with a steeper mountain of secrets. 

“Are you listening, because I’m not going to repeat myself?” 

“You went to a festival once, with a boy and his father…”

She nods.

But maybe it won’t be so hard to uncover those secrets. Maybe he only had to ask her to share the pleasant memories. It seems to almost comfort her to talk about this boy and his father. 

The name Hajime comes back to him and he wonders if this story is about that man.

“Can we do this again?” He asks when she is finished. 

She furrows her brows. “A story a night! You tell me about a special moment and I’ll tell you about one.” 

She considers. “Alright, a story a night. But you don’t get to ask any questions.”


	11. Soldiers & Monsters

_ “How’d things go last night?”  _

_ “I don’t know.” _

_ “You don’t know? How can you not know?” _

_ “I don’t really have any other dates that I can compare it to, Hajime.” _

_ “Well did he make you laugh and smile?” _

_ “He did.” But he also reminded her of just why she doesn’t particularly deserve to laugh and smile. She wonders if Hajime would reprimand her for turning his son down. Even if he wouldn’t, she isn’t sure that she should. She can’t imagine that there is a line of people waiting to shower her with affection. She is almost certain that she wouldn’t take well to it anyhow. She isn’t the sort for hugs and kisses and tender touches. It is quite hard to imagine herself on the receiving end of it. She can already picture her cheeks growing red and she loathes the very idea of being left a flustered mess.  _

_ “But?” Hajime prompts.  _

_ She shrugs and slaps her hands against her thighs. “But then he told me about how his wife died. That kind of ruins the mood, wouldn’t you say?” _

_ Hajime rolls his eyes, “sounds like Seukhyun. He doesn’t exactly know how to choose dinner conversations. I’d wager that he’s just about as...socially confused as you are.”  _

_ “Is that how Atsu’s mother died? Did those soldiers kill her too?” _

_ He glances into the other room where Atsu leaps off of his bed with Bao, The Magnificent Mole in hand. He drops the stuffed badger-mole into Caihong’s lap. “I thought that his name was Mud Muncher!” The girl declares. Satisfied that the boy is fully engrossed, Hajime turns back to her. “No. She was killed by the Fire Nation. After our own soldiers left they told the enemy soldiers exactly where to find us. I told Atsu that she just got sick…”  _

_ “Have you ever met a good soldier, Hajime?” _

_ “Personally, no.” He replies. “But I’m sure that there are some out there.” _

_ Azula responds with a bitter sniff.  _

_ “You don’t think so?” _

_ “I don’t. They fight for what they think is best and then they find out that, that thing is actually the worst. And then they realize that they are monsters. Of course, most of them knew it all along. Nobody joins the military unless they want to kill someone.” _

_ “Do you…” he looks into the other room. Atsu has fastened one of Caihong’s dolls to Bao. “Do you want to go for a walk?” _

_ She nods her head towards the children.  _

_ “Atsu, Caihong!” They look up. “Rikka and I are going for a quick walk, stay out of trouble or I’ll go right to old man Hajime!” _

_ “Don’t worry dad, Bao the Magnificent Mole has Avatar powers, he can defend the whole house from evil Fire Lord Bonsai!”  _

_ “Do you mean, Ozai?” Azula asks. _

_ He shakes his head, “nope, I mean Bonsai! Fire Lord Bonsai is an evil bonsai tree that can talk and its leaves are on fire--except the fire is purple---and Avatar Mao is the world’s last hope because…” he sucks in a deep breath, “...because if he doesn’t stop Bonsai then Bonsai will use Roku’s comet to destroy the lion-turtle!” _

_ “Also Ba Sing Se, Bonsai is going to burn Ba Sing Se if Mao can’t stop him.” Caihong adds.  _

_ Azula nods. “If you say so.”  _

_ “And! And! And also Fire Lord Bonsai has a son that’s a cabbage named Leaf and he’s the prince.” He holds up a leaf, “this is…” _

_ “Leaf?” Hajime guesses.  _

_ “Mmmhmm!”  _

_ “Come on, Hajime.” She tugs at the man’s arm before Atsu can introduce any other offensive caricatures. _

_ “You and Cai behave.” He waits for the children to nod before following Azula outside. “We were saying…” _

_ “There are no good soldiers Hajime. It doesn’t matter what side of the war they are on. The winning side simply  _ looks  _ less evil because they are painted well. But they’re all…” _

_ “You were a soldier, weren’t you?” Azula swallows. She feels his hand cup around her own. “Let’s walk by the riverside, it’s quieter there.” _

_ He doesn’t speak to her again until they come to a stop on a rickety bridge. “I know that you like being right but I disagree with you. Sure, there are people who join the war over power and bloodlust but some people join the military because they have no choice. Some folks need money, some were forced into it, and some want to protect loved ones. What was your reason?” _

_ Azula thinks for a moment. It certainly wasn’t a matter of money and really she had no one to protect. She didn’t feel particularly forced, she’d rather enjoyed it and she thinks that she would enjoy it still--to feel the thrill of a conquest, a rush of adrenaline, a feeling of worth and accomplishment. “Power.” _

_ “Power?” Hajime asks. _

_ She nods. “I don’t know why you are surprised.” _

_ He seems to study her for a long time. “Why did you want power?” _

_ She furrows her brows. _

_ “I’ve come to observe that most people who want power want it because they feel weak.” _

_ But she had, had all of the power in the world in riches and in bending.  _

_ “So why did you want it?” _

_ “I…” She looks off. Off to where the river leads, curling into a tangle of pine. Catkins and tallgrasses bob in the breeze. And yet, even with all of this clarity, she can’t seem to think of a reason why she would have wanted more power. She supposes that, that is just it; she never wanted it for herself, she wanted it so that she could turn it over to her father. _

_ “I think that soldiers are a bit different in the Fire Nation. It seems like, over there, some people were raised on war and never knew any different.” He pauses to chuck a stone into the river. It lands with a plop and stirred up ringlets on the surface. A dragonfly launches itself out of the grasses. “I guess it isn’t so different in the Earth Kingdom. They make it sound glorious, and good and so you start to think that it is…” _

_ Azula stares at the backs of her hands, feels the breeze fluttering her hair against her neck.  _

_ “I don’t think that you wanted power, usually people can say exactly why they want it.” _

_ “To give it to my father.”  _

_ He nods. “So...love then?” _

_ “What?” _

_ “You wanted power so that you could give it to someone you loved? He was too weak to get it for himself so…” _

_ “He wasn’t weak. He was the most powerful man I knew. He wanted more of it so I was going to get it for him.” _

_ “Okay, he wasn’t weak.” Hajime nods. He is quiet for the longest time. And several times he opens his mouth as if to say something but closes it once more as if thinking better of doing so. She watches a count of six birds swoop down to take drinks before he finally says, “It sounds like you were one of the people who was raised on war. I don’t think that a good father would want his daughter to go to war for him.” _

_ “My father was a good father.” Her stomach sinks even as she says it. He was such a good father that he left her behind. Strangely that probably was the best thing that he could have done for her. It weighs on her so heavily that she finds herself practically slumping over the bridge.  _

_ “You didn’t go to war for power. You went to war for love, to show it or to earn it. Or maybe both.”  _

_ Love… _

_ He cups his hand over hers. “Maybe it led to bad things but at least you can say that you had one of the best reasons to become a soldier.” _

_ If only that was it. If only that was the whole truth. If only glory and fear had no part of why she’d done so. If only she had just been a simple soldier. “I’m not what you think I am.”  _

_ He chuckles. “Who says that I’ve leapt to any conclusions about you?” _

_ “It isn’t a matter of saying it, it’s a matter of implying.”  _

_ “I don’t have any solid ideas of who you are but I know what you aren’t.” _

_ “Oh?” _

_ He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I know that you’re not a bad person, Rikka.”  _

_ Rikka is not a bad person. He can’t soundly say the same for Azula. She opens her mouth and it very nearly comes out. She very nearly tells him just who he is dealing with. _

_ “The people in this village only say good things about you. A lot of them are more open to firebenders because of you. Maybe you think that you’re a bad person, but you’re not.” His hand slides off her hers. “We should probably check on Atsu and Caihong.”  _

_ She nods. “Yes, that would be a good idea.”  _

_ That day she learns that she might not be a monster.  _

**.oOo.**

She hates to admit it but she likes Sokka’s laugh. It isn’t charming. It isn’t elegant. It isn’t a pleasant sound, he snorts. But it is genuine, pure, and unapologetic happiness. The sort of laugh she hasn’t heard since listening in on Atsu and Caihong’s play. She holds the Bao against her stomach, absently stroking his head as she waits for Sokka to finish laughing. 

“So you’re telling me that this Atsu kid sees me as a boomerang and he thinks that you’re a…”

“The color blue.” She nods. “Anything that he can find that is blue. He had bits and pieces of information but he had it all mixed up and so instead of blue fire, Fire Lord Bonsai’s daughter is just blue. Anything blue.” 

“And ‘Roku’s’ comet was a…”

“Flaming cabbage sent by a very vengeful merchant, yes.” 

“Oh man, that kid’s a genius. He outta write for the Ember Island players.” He wipes a tear from his eyes. “Maybe you can introduce me to him one day.”

She squeezes the badger-mole and shakes her head. She is glad that his eyes are still closed with laughter. She campuses herself before he looks up. 

“Sorry, I know that I promised not to ask any questions after your story but I really just needed some clarification.”

“Those questions were superficial, I didn’t mind answering them. Your turn.”

“Alright, so do you want to hear about the time when we took Zuko to the Water Tribes for some penguin sledding and he got swarmed by them or…”

“Yes. I want to hear that one.”

“Or…”

“I want to hear the Zuko penguin story.” Azula says firmly. 

**.oOo.**

He supposes that he will have to save the, Zuko stuck in a coconut tree for a day when she isn’t so stubbornly refusing the possibility of a funnier Zuko mishap story. She stares at him expectantly, drumming her fingers upon the badger-mole.

“So it was an anniversary present from me to Suki. I decided that it would be fun to take her to the tribes because she always wanted to see a penguin in person. It was great we got all snuggly and cozy, we had these really warm fur blankets and this fire going. There was a blizzard outside so Katara and Zuko and the others were stuck with Hakoda at Bato’s place. Suki and I had some alone time.” He winks. “She pecked me on the cheek and...”

“Spare me the details, Sokka. The only pecking that I would like to hear about involves Zuzu and penguins.”

He flushes. “Right, well after Suki and I got our alone time we decided to take a group trip to the penguin caves. Aang wanted to go penguin sledding again, he said that he could beat Zuko down the hillside. And you know how Zuko gets, ‘I’m going to beat the Avatar in a penguin race,  _ for honor _ !’ So he went after the largest penguin. Those things are bigger than you think!” 

Azula takes a sip of tea, “are they now?”

He nods. “Pretty sure there was one that is bigger than you. I guess that’s not saying much because…”

She fixes him with a deadpan stare and a quirked brow. 

“Because...those penguins are massive, not because you’re really small.” He hears her inhale through her nose and snickers. “So Zuko finds the largest penguin that he could find and just leaps on. But that penguin was a mother and it was meal time so all of the chicks just waddle on up but Zuko is in the way. I think that they thought that he was their mother because they were trying to get food from him.”

“Did they get it?”

Sokka shakes his head. “Not from Zuko. Katara had to run all the way back to the village to get buckets of krill to lure them off of Zuko. He was picking feathers out of his hair for days.”

“That does sound like Zuzu. But usually it’s the turtle-ducks.” She gives a one armed shrug. “I guess that he has an affinity for creatures with beaks.”

“Thanks for sharing the badger-mole story.” 

She toys with the sash of her nightgown. “I’m...glad that you enjoyed it.”

He grins, though it isn’t particularly the story that he enjoyed--granted her certainly did enjoy that well enough--what he enjoyed was hearing it from her. Was seeing the soft smile on her lips. Was noticing and observing the way her eyes seemed to light up when she made mention of the boy. 

It was comforting. 

Comforting and reassuring somehow.

“Does it make you feel better?” He asks.

She tilts her head.

“To talk about moments that made you happy.” 

She works a muscle in her jaw, “I suppose that it helps a little, yes.” 

“Maybe all of us can get together and…”

“No.” Azula murmurs. “Not yet. I don’t want to share these things with Zuzu yet, he’ll be...overbearing. TyLee gets too sappy and Mai isn’t interested in hearing me go on about some kid.”

“He’s not just some kid.” Sokka says immediately. “I can tell.” Azula tenses and he lifts his hands. “Don’t worry, I’m not asking questions. But it isn’t a bad thing, you know, to show people that you’ve got feelings and that you care about other people.” 

She reclines in the chair, props her head against her arm and drapes the other over her belly. She seems to stare off at nothing at all. “Perhaps.” 

“Think about it!” He insists. “Servants and guards have been approaching you more. They aren’t scared of you. I know that Mai and TyLee say that you have a thing for being all scary and intimidating but you don’t need to be anymore because…”

“The war has been over for years.” Her eyes don’t leave that distant spot, wherever it is. “I know.”

**.oOo.**

“Then why do you still have so many walls up?”

Because she is afraid.

“If you think that we won’t like you for being yourself, it’s not true. We have met all sorts of weirdos that we love. Like those swamp guys, you met them! They’re weird and we like them!”

“The more you talk the deeper you dig.” She rolls her eyes. But he isn’t entirely off in his assumptions. 

“You took a lot of walls down for me today,” he continues. “Believe it or not, I liked it. I liked the little glimpse that I saw.”

Her tummy flutters. “Yes well I’m not ready for that.”

“Not ready to let people know that you’re a human being?” 

Not ready to let people see her, all of her. Not ready for them to get attached to her and care for her. She isn’t even ready for the possibility. She certainly isn’t ready to let people love her. Not the way Hajime did. Cherishable or not she isn’t ready to feel again what Hajime had made her feel. Not with someone who isn’t Hajime. 


	12. Give Them A Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oml this was a long chapter. Longer than most of the chapters I put out. xD

_ It isn’t that Seukhyun is a bad man. It isn’t that he constantly unwittingly belittles her. In fact, he hasn’t unknowingly spoken ill of her since their first unfortunate date. She stoops down and buries another turnip seed. Granted she isn’t sure if she is actually supposed to be planting them or if Ojihara had different seeds in mind for the winter season. She doesn’t entirely know what she is supposed to be doing with the garden now that the harvest is over.  _

_ More often than not she finds herself simply standing in the empty field, staring off into the sunrise. More often than not she finds herself thinking about the several dates Seukyun has dragged her off on this week. They truly hadn’t been unpleasant but she hasn’t felt any less awkward than the first one.  _

_ She jabs her small shovel into the dirt, stands up, and wipes her forehead. She shivers, it will be her first winter in the Earth Kingdom and she can’t imagine that it will be as merciful and pleasant as a Fire Nation winter. She isn’t sure that she is entirely ready for her first encounter with snow.  _

_ “I know that you enjoy working your until you can barely stand but your gonna have to get used to having some free time.” Seukhyun laughs.  _

_ She tilts her head.  _

_ “Put the shovel away, we don’t plant before winter, nothing is going to grow. Nothing that our farm produces, anyways.”  _

_ Azula flushes. “Right, yes, I was just practicing my planting skill for next year.”  _

_ “Right.” He rolls his eyes.  _

_ “Caihong said that Ojihara begins planting turnips early.” _

_ He laughs, “Caihong likes messing with people when she isn’t getting enough attention.”  _

_ Azula’s cheeks grow doubly red. To let herself be fooled by a child… _

_ How as she allowed her guard to drop so startlingly low. By Agni, that child is in for a stern discussion the next time the cross paths. _

_ “It’s fine.” He pats between her shoulder blades. “You’re new to farming.”  _

_ “It’s so simple. I should know…” _

_ “Farming isn’t as basic as it seems, you have to know the weather, know your crops and the seeds, it’s all very precise.”  _

_ “Dad! Gran’pa wants ta talk ta you.” _

_ “I’ll head inside then.” He turns back to Azula, smiles at her, and wipes a smear of dirt off of her cheek. “I’ll get my old man to let you use our bathhouse before we go out tonight.” _

_ And that’s just it, it occurs to her, she has to make herself all pretty for him. Perfect. She hasn’t felt that sort of pressure since leaving the palace. She doesn’t feel the compulsion with Hajime. But of course not, Hajime is a friend, not a lover.  _

_ Hajime is… _

_ He’s Hajime. _

_ And yet speaking to him on the bridge, it was easy. Comfortable.  _

_ She swallows. She would rather not think of that. _

_ “You told me that Ojihara plants turnip seeds in the winter.”  _

_ Caihong nods. “Mmhm, I did” _

_ “Why?” _

_ The girl fixes her with a gap-toothed and cheeky little grin. “‘Cause I thou’d it’d be funny.” _

_ “I stole a turnip for you…” _

_.oOo. _

_ It is nice to smell of soap and flora instead of sweat and work. Nice to have her hair not disheveled. Nice to have a slight touch of makeup on her skin. If only she felt so well groomed and secure on the inside. _

_ If only, getting prettied up had any worth at all.  _

_ If only it didn’t make her feel so ugly.  _

_ She stares at her reflection on the surface of her cup. Suddenly she feels as though she has changed very little. That everything thus far has been for naught. She is still vile of heart and sick of head. She has only put distance between herself and who she had been. _

_ But it will come back for her. She knows that it will. It always does.  _

_ “Are you sure that you’re okay?” Seukhyun asks?  _

_ She supposes that she isn’t. She is certain that it isn’t normal to see evil in re-attaining good hygiene, to feel a sort of disconnect when her face is painted in a certain way. She thinks that she will avoid makeup and styling from here on out. _

_ “I’m alright.” _

_ He crinkles his brows, “you look upset.”  _

_ “Really, I’m fine.”  _

_ He sighs. “Do you really want to be here?”  _

_ Her heart clenches. “I...yes, Wu Jing is comfortable.” _

_ “No. Do you really want to be here,” he gestures about the restaurant, “with me.”  _

_ She picks up her cup and empties it. She doesn’t  _ not  _ want to be here. She isn’t sure that she’d have anywhere else to be. And she wonders if she ought to move along, onto the next village as she should have done weeks ago.  _

_ She used to have goals.  _

_ Used to at least be able to pretend that this journey had a point.  _

_ Somewhere along her path she has strayed. All she sees is stagnation.  _

_ “Yes. I think.”  _

_ “Rikka, I need you to know.” He says almost desperately. “I need to know if this means anything or if…” _

_ “You’re just wasting your time?” _

_ “I wouldn’t phrase it like that.” _

_ “There’s only one way to phrase it.” Azula replies. “I want to be here.” But she isn’t sure if she  _ should  _ be here.  _

_ “But…” _

_ She says nothing. He doesn’t leave her with time to think of something worth saying, something that could accurately convey just what she feels without revealing too much. He rakes his hand through his hairline. “I like you, Rikka. But you're always so...guarded.”  _

_ She can’t contest it.  _

_ “I can’t tell if you feel the same way about me. You weren’t as tense when we were just plucking turnips together.”  _

_ “Plucking turnips and talking is easier.” It feels natural.  _

_ “Have you ever been on a date? Before me, I mean?”  _

_ She shakes her head. She doesn’t have anything to compare these dates to. “Is it supposed to be--” _

_ “This awkward?” He asks. “Maybe on the first one.” He adds a laugh. “But I thought that you would have gotten used to it by now.”  _

_ She knows that she should have. “Do you think that some people are incapable of love?” _

_ He flinches and stumbles over his words, babbling but not truly saying anything until finally stumbling, “I think that some people haven’t found another person that they fit with yet.”  _

_ “I like you Seukhyun.”  _

_ “But do you  _ love  _ me?” _

_ She doesn’t know how. She is certain that she doesn’t.  _

**_.oOo._ **

_ She is surprised to still be in Ojihara’s good graces, likely because Seukhyun hasn’t yet complained about their failed romance. Though she wouldn’t call it that, it had been too brief and too forced. Probably too sudden from the start. Really she had no business trying at all.  _

_ “What am I doing?” She rubs her face.  _

_ “Your laundry.” Hajime replies.  _

_ Azula sighs. “I’m not talking about what I’m doing right now I’m talking about…” she supposes she is talking about what she is doing right now. Truly, what point is there in lingering here, performing mundane tasks like doing laundry. “I think that I should leave.” _

_ “Did something happen between you and Seuk? If Ojihara is evicting you, you can stay with Atsu and I.” _

_ “I’m not being evicted.” Yet. “I’ve simply been here for too long.”  _

_ Hajime chuckles. “I forgot that you’re a wanderer.”  _

_ She crosses her arms.  _

_ “If you think that leaving is good for you, then do what you need to do.” _

_ She nods. “Atsu will get over it right?” _

_ “Hmm?” _

_ “When I’m gone. Atsu will get over it?”  _

_ “He’s a resilient kid.” Hajime sighs. “He’s dealt with loss before, I think that he’ll be alright.” _

_ “And you?”  _

_ He laughs, “just join me for dinner once before you go, okay?” _

_ He has been well to her. She supposes that she owes him at least that much.  _

**_.oOo._ **

_ “Sorry that it isn’t anything fancy.” He says as she looks over the meal he has prepared. Truth be told, she had been expecting a night out with a more lavish atmosphere rather than a home cooked meal had over a few candles. She supposes that Seukhyun has been spoiling her. And how strange it is to call something as simple as Seukhyun’s dinner dates, spoiling.  _

_ “I don’t mind.”  _

_ “That’s a relief.” He forces a chuckle.  _

_ “Why?”  _

_ He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess that it’s just that Seukyun...he’s charming and clever and his old man is the richest man in Wu-Jing. And all I have is this. This small shack, just enough to get food and clothes, and just enough left over to get Atsu some new toys every once in a while.”  _

_ “This is fine.” She has grown used to much less. “It’s comfortable.” Very comfortable, there is nothing around to tempt her back to the palace and its alluring luxurious. Nothing to flash reminders of her past in her face. “What is this anyways.” She gestures to the bowl.  _

_ “It’s cabbage stew. Atsu has been begging me for cabbage stew.” _

_ “What kind of child begs for vegetables?” The deprived sort, she answers for herself. The sort who was always expected to stay away from sweets until the desire for it was replaced with guilt for eating them… _

_ “The kind that was told that vegetables will give him plant bending powers.” Hajime winks. “If he asks, tell him that eating sunflower seeds makes fire benders stronger.”  _

_ “I’ll keep that in mind.”  _

_ “If you don’t like cabbage, I can make us something else.” _

_ “Cabbage stew is fine.” _

_ He takes his seat, “you seem quieter than usual tonight.”  _

_ She shrugs.  _

_ “What’s going on, Rikka?” _

_ That she isn’t Rikka at all. That she can never truly be Rikka no matter how fervently she pines to be. That she will always be Azula. No matter what she does, Azula will always be there. And Azula will only complicate and dismantle Hajime’s cozy lifestyle.  _

_ “I think that I’ve just stayed here for longer than I should have.” She replies. And now she is hesitant to let it go.  _

_ “Why’s that?” _

_ “Sooner or later it’s going to catch up and when it does, it’s going to get me and it’s going to take you down with it.” _

_ “What is?” _

_ “You don’t know me Hajime. You don’t know what I am…” _

_ “I know that you have a past.” He replies. “And that if you want to talk more about it, I’ll listen, no judging.”  _

_ No judging… _

_ But how can he say that when he doesn’t know just how much he will have to downplay and fight to justify? “I don’t want to talk about it.” She just wants one person who cares for her without feeling as though she is a volcano waiting to erupt.  _

_ He nods. “That’s alright.” He frowns and likely that’s the end of it. All the better, it will make it easier for her to leave when he admits that it isn’t alright and that he’d be better off with someone who has less mystery, less baggage.  _

_ “I think that I should go now.”  _

_ “Do you want to say goodbye to Atsu?” _

_ She shakes her head. That would make things tripley hard. “He’s trying to sleep.”  _

_ “Right.” Hajime stuffs his hands into his pockets and wanders with her towards the door. “Can I…? Can I tell you something before you leave?” _

_ Her stomach sinks. She thinks that she already knows what’s coming. “Is it going to make this more difficult?”  _

_ “Yeah, probably.” He admits.  _

_ And maybe that’s exactly what she’s looking for. Something, some profound reason to stay. Something to keep her tethered… “I like you, Rikka.”  _

_ “Clearly.”  _

_ He shakes his head and gives a sad chuckle, “you really are awful with people.” He brushes her hair back just as he had done on the bridge. But this time he takes her hand and kisses her cheek.  _

_ She bites the inside of her cheek just hard enough to taste blood. Just hard enough to swallow her emotions and keep her eyes from getting misty. “Good history or bad history, I’d like you to stick around and share it with me one day.”  _

_ He truly isn’t making this easy at all. She wishes that she has retained just enough apathy to leave.  _

_ “Will you come back?” _

_ “What?”  _

_ “After you go…” he gestures vaguely “do whatever you’re going to do, will you come back and tell me how it went. Atsu will probably want to hear every detail.”  _

_ She looks towards her feet and runs a hand through her hair. She is a wanderer. She can’t afford to be tethered and yet…”no.” _

_ “No?” _

_ She sighs, “there won’t be a story to tell.” She replies. “I’ve just decided not to leave.” He probably thinks her to be annoyingly fickle. She waits for a wash of relief to overtake her. For that tell-tale rush of certainty, the one she gets every time she makes a decision that she knows is correct.  _

_ It doesn’t come. _

_ Agni she is so lost… _

_ He takes her hand, she doesn’t think that she has seen anyone look so relieved and joyful. “Thank the spirits for that!” He squeezes her hand. And there it is, if only slightly. A small little wave of reassurance.  _

_ The current is just strong enough to pull her closer to him. Just close enough for her lips to hover over his. Where she hesitates, he fills in the blanks. He pulls her that much closer, his forehead touches hers and then his lips brush her lips.  _

_ She closes her eyes.  _

_ He tastes like hope and like cabbage stew. He feels like a chance, a beginning.  _

_ “Ewwwww, dad! You guys are gross!”  _

_ That night she learns what it is to love. _

**.oOo.**

The days keep her rather busy, mercifully so. Between an official welcome home ceremony and several council meetings, her mind is kept well away from the trickier things. From Sokka and his well-meant words. 

She lets herself slink back into petty delights; absurdly luxurious silk robes, a full face of makeup, and an immoderate amount of pampering. She closes her eyes, clasps her hands over her belly, and leans back into the chair as one of several servants massages richly scented fire lily shampoo into her hair. Another lifts her hand and scrubs it with lotion while another still files her nails. 

Old habits. She is falling back on old habits. 

In a way it is a comfort, at least now she can prove that she hasn’t changed that significantly. That she isn’t worth giving a second chance. That she isn’t worth befriending. 

And yet the tribesman still marches right up to her as brazenly as before. But of course; it isn’t about a face full of makeup or a few days of overindulgent spoiling, she has to sell it. “What do you want?” She asks stiffly, without so much as opening her eyes. 

“You’re grumpy today.” He laughs. 

“What do you want?” She repeats, with significantly less bite.

“I get it.” He says, “we had a deep conversation and things got...fluffy so now you have to act tough. Zuko does the same thing.” 

She quirks a brow, “you’re going for the low jabs today.” She sees a flood of relief fill his eyes. He nudges her. The servant scoffs while Azula rolls her eyes. Sokka mumbles an apology as the servant sighs and begins scrubbing the stray line of polish off of Azula’s finger. “Low jabs aren’t enough, you have to ruin my manicure too?”

He half smiles. “So being on the road has given you a sense of humor!”

“I had a sense of humor before?” 

“A bad one.” 

“It was fine before.” The servant puts her hand back in place and reaches for the other. She holds it up and inspects their handiwork. “Now, don’t make me ask a third time. What do you want, Sokka?”

**.oOo.**

He is fairly certain that she doesn’t mean to sound so startling this time, but her drawl is just low and slow enough to be so. He thinks that it doesn’t even register to her. She lays her head back and closes her eyes once more with a small yawn. 

Sokka takes a deep breath. He supposes that now is as good a time as any. “I was hoping that we could go...do an activity together.” He could slap himself. He really needs to find something else to fall back on when he doesn’t know what he wants to say. 

“Sure Sokka. You let me know when you figure out what that activity is and I suppose we can do it.” 

He blinks, “really?” 

She nods.    
  


He grins, “great! Uh there was this theater show that I wanted to see.”

“It better not be one of those war reenactments. I’d rather not see my misfortunes played for laughs.” 

He rubs the back of his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to see that either.” He cringes as the memories of the Ember Island Players flood back in. “It’s actually a Fire Nation retelling of Cave Of The Two Lovers.” 

Azula crinkles her nose. “Your taste in theater is terrible.”

He deflates.

“But I suppose that it beats another awkward dinner where Zuko treats me like I’m delicate and unstable.” 

“Good!” He exclaims. “I mean good that you still want to go, not that Zuko…” He flushes. 

“I know what you meant, Sokka.” She replies softly.

He finds himself nervously rubbing the back of his head again. He wonders how it is that she is still so cool and collected while he is a blundering mess despite having declared that she no good with socializing. He thinks that it is actually coming quite easily to her, even if she doesn’t realize it. And maybe that’s exactly why he is itching so furiously to get close to her, to figure out exactly what changed her so much. 

“Do you have somewhere else to be or are you just going to stand there and watch them pamper me?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t have anywhere to be until tonight.” 

“Of course you don’t.” The serving girl sets another perfectly groomed hand back in position. Azula turns her head to look at him. “You might as well have a seat then.”

“Is this going to take a while.” 

“That depends, which theater are we going to?” 

“Why does that matter?” 

“I’m not in the Earth Kingdom anymore; higher end theatres require more makeup and styling.” 

“Is anything  _ really  _ required when you’re the princess?” He asks. “What do you want to do?”

“It’s what I don’t want to do, Sokka. I already speak like an Earth Kingdom peasant, I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

**.oOo.**

She doesn’t want to make a fool of herself and she also doesn’t want to lose the self that she has worked so hard to find. But, Agni, how easy being back home makes it. Yet, it would be easier to avoid replacing Hajime if she made herself as unlikable as she had been…

“You won’t make a fool of yourself. And if you do, I’ll be there to make a bigger fool of myself and then they won’t even pay attention to you.” 

But he is making it terribly difficult to do so--her heart seizes and she bites the inside of her cheek. 

“And besides, everyone will be watching the show, not you.” 

“Sokka, I am the show.” 

She has never heard him laugh so hard. A full and booming belly laugh. “Not everything is about you.”

She narrows her eyes and crosses her arms as her cheeks color themselves a faint pink. “I’ve only just come home, not even a month ago, I’m going to draw looks. It only takes a short look to…”

“To what? Decide that you’re backwater street trash now?” He pauses. “Believe it or not, things have changed here too. Most people have been nice to you, remember?”

She rubs her lips together. “I’m used to...”

His face softens, trading his jesting demeanor for something more sympathetic. “Having to be perfect for everyone?” 

“It wasn’t like that in the Earth Kingdom.” 

“It doesn’t have to be like that here either. Unless you want it to be.” 

She doesn’t. 

“We’re going to the Phoenix Claw theater. How much beautifying does that require?”

She sighs. “The highest degree of it.”

“I’ll get something to read while I wait.” 

He makes it to the door before she finally makes up her mind. She supposes that it will be fun to tell him that he wandered all the way down the hall and up the stairs and then back again for no reason. 

“Do you want us to bring your fuller makeup collection.” 

She shakes her head. “A touch of it will do just fine.” She’ll let her natural beauty do the rest of the work. She inhales deeply, Agni does she hope that she won’t come to regret it. 

**.oOo.**

She is tense almost the whole time. Tense and, admittedly, underdressed. He might have underestimated just how opulent this theater was going to be. And now they are standing out because they don’t stand out. And admittedly, even he feels flustered. He can only imagine how awkward Azula feels. 

“Sorry.” He mumbles. “I didn’t realize that it would be  _ this  _ fancy.”

Azula shrugs. “I’ve been here before.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks. “Nevermind. You tried to.” 

“Yes.” She agrees. 

As they take their seats, he can’t help but feel like he has blown it. Blown whatever relationship they have built. And all because...because what? He tried to push her to be herself. To do what made her comfortable. But she isn’t comfortable at all. She shifts in her seat. With ten minutes to show time, most people do gander at her and he isn’t sure if all of their gawking is born of starstrickeness. 

They whisper too, just loud enough for him, every now and again, to catch an, “is she alright?” Or an, “I thought that she had been given her status back.” 

“I think that you look perfect.” He smiles.

“Thanks.” She murmurs. 

Every so often he hears someone quietly ponder about how they wish that they could be brave enough to come to the theater dressed so informally. Or about how simplicity has more tact. He isn’t sure that Azula hears those musings. He is certain that she is deeply into blocking most everything out. 

It is a relief when the candles are snuffed and the curtains rise. He finds himself watching her more than the show. Watching her expression, seeing the stress leave it for a brief time. She catches him more than once.

The curtains fall and the candles are re-lit. She wastes no time, “I’m not the show?” 

“You were for me.” 

“You aren’t smooth, Sokka.” She folds her arms. This time he can’t tell at all whether she is joking or not. Is isn’t brazen enough to ask. Not as brazen as the people around them;

intermission is a steady flow of bolder mutterings. “So that’s what an extended stay in the Earth Kingdom does to a person” and “such a shame.” 

He feels her hand grip his. And very tightly. He thinks that she might not even be aware that she is doing it. She is anxious enough, he doesn't point it out, doesn’t jerk away.

“Follow me.” She says.

He doesn’t protest, intentions be damned, he has definitely messed up. 

But she doesn’t lead him to the door. 

She leads him to the stage.

**.oOo.**

There was something so exhilarating, about it. About striding down the aisles and climbing onto the stage.

“Azula what are you…?”

“Just get up here.” She holds her hand out and pulls him on stage with her. 

It is a compulsion, more than anything else. 

An impulse. 

“Introduce us.” 

“What?” 

“Introduce us, Sokka.” 

His face is redder than the curtains behind them. He clears his throat, “uh...flameo hotmen...and hotwomen.” 

She chuckles. “Louder, Sokka.”

He clears his throat once more and repeats himself. 

“They can’t hear you. You have to do it like this.” She pauses and with as much more bravado than she actually feels calls out, “flameo hotmen and women!” Her voice carries about the theater. She feels almost as though she is at one of her father’s war meetings, all eyes on her. All ears. Watching, waiting, hooked on her every word. “I am your princess and this is my… I don’t know what he is…”

“Your friend?” He suggests.

“This is my,” she hesitates, “friend, Sokka. And, since you’ve all been staring at us anyways, we’ll be performing the rest of the show!” Her voice resounds around the room, throwing her own impromptu foolishness back at her.

It is stupid.

It is humiliating.

It is liberating.

**.oOo.**

His face is still burning well into their quiet walk home. And he isn’t sure which bit leaves him feeling the most fluttery; the botching of the script, the exaggerated yet propless gestures, or that she had…

He still tastes her lipstick on his lips. He must say, she is a phenomenal thespian. 

And she had done her first show in front of a full house at Capital City’s most extravagant, esteemed theater. 

“Not bad for first time actors.” He forces a laugh.

She shrugs. “It is my show. Everything is about me.”

“Only because you made it about you.” He points out.

Her walking comes to a halt. “Did I?”

“Well, you took the background role you were hired for and cast yourself in the starring role.”

“Perhaps I did.” 

“Why?” 

She shrugs again and continues her stride.

“Why?” He insists. 

“Maybe I’m tired of pretending.” 

She isn't looking at him, but he looks away to conceal his grin anyhow.

**.oOo.**

“Maybe I don’t want to hide anymore.” She adds quietly. It is so tiresome to continuously refine herself. To suppress aspects of herself. To present an immaculate and polished version of her when the real her has been beaten and worn and reshaped into something else entirely. Something more pleasant. She doesn’t think that she was ever truly the elegant sort. Not by nature. 

“Sorry, this was such a disaster. It was supposed to be a relaxing night.” Sokka laments. “But I put you on the spot and made you feel upset again.”

“No, Sokka.” She gives a small titter. “It was...nice.” 

“Nice?”

She nods. “I had...I had a good time.” 

She doesn’t feel upset. She feels like herself. For the first time since coming home, she feels like herself. 


	13. A Normal, Good Day

_ It was really only a matter of time before he saw her for what she really was. A mess. A disaster. An unsettling freak. And thank Agni that Atsu wasn’t home.  _

_ She supposes it was a day like any other. Really there was nothing different about it. Nothing even slightly different from the cozy routine that she has managed to fall into and yet here she is… _

_ She supposes it has just all caught up with her... _

_ It was a bright morning. She’d gone to the market--closed her eyes and savored the kaleidoscope of morning scents; the first batches of bread for the day, much less poignant Earth Kingdom spices, herbal teas wafting from restaurants, and the jasmines resting in window sills among others. _

_ Just as she has every day for the past year, Azula made her way to the town library. It had become something of a passtime to consume scroll after scroll, text after text. She is fond of the debate events that the library holds every now and again; they assure her that her mind isn’t growing dull. And when she can, she steals off and deep into the treeline to work on her bending. She won’t let herself weaken, even if she has no particular reason to fight anymore.  _

_ And it was going smoothly as it ever had, more than smoothly, really. She thinks that her fire has more power these days, more control. She finds that without the pressures of war and high standards, that she has more energy to put forth. And without judgment she has no constraints. Nothing to keep her from experimenting with forms and stances of her own.  _

_ That afternoon was another spent mixing earthbending forms with firebending forms. The weeks prior had been about observation; watching them bend and imitating them without fire. It had drawn some looks and plenty of questions. Mostly from Atsu and mostly about why a firebender would want to practice earthbending katas.  _

_ Her studies had come to pay off that afternoon. She supposes that she’d felt accomplished but that sense of achievement...it was somehow skewed. Off and in a way she couldn’t place.  _

_ And perhaps that should have been her first clue to tread carefully.  _

_ All in all, her day had come to pass in a half haze. Harvesting turnips was an absent-minded task, around turnip six she had drifted. She thinks that Seukhyun might have conversed with her for some time. _

_ “Are you alright?” She remembered him asking. “I can ask my old man to let you have the rest of the evening off.” _

_ She hadn’t taken him up on the offer. When she looked over her shoulder she saw a full wheelbarrow. “What time is it?” _

_ “About an hour into sunset.”  _

_ Azula had tensed. She had started several hours before sunset. She opened her mouth and closed it again.  _

_ She remembers Ojihara insisting that she went home with a few extra coins and an assurance that she’d done more than her share of work for the day anyhow. She doesn’t remember walking home but she remembers Seukhyun telling Hajime to, “watch your fiance.”  _

_ She doesn’t hold it against him, he had only left her alone for perhaps five minutes or so. But that was plenty enough. She doesn’t understand, it had been such a good day. Such a productive day.  _

_ Yet she is curled up on the floor weeping.  _

_ They are back. _

_ It has been so very long since she’d seen any of them. But they stand around her; Zuko, Mai, TyLee and her mother, uncle, and father. All of them. And they all tell her that she doesn’t deserve what she has.  _

_ “You ran away.” Zuko points out.  _

_ “That isn’t the same as making things right.” TyLee elaborates with a frown. _

_ Azula claws at her hairline. “I needed to leave.” She mutters. “You didn’t want me around anyways, I know that you didn’t.” _

_ “Yeah. We wanted you to stay put in the asylum with the rest of the lunatics.” Mai quirks a brow. “Do you really think that you should be talking to Hajime?” _

_ “And the kid!” Zuko adds. “You’re going to hurt them.” _

_ “Just like you hurt everyone you care about.” TyLee nods.  _

_ Azula’s stomach drops, she can’t speak past the lump in her throat. And maybe that is a mercy, because she hears footsteps. She isn’t sure if those are real either.  _

_ “He only offered to marry you because he’s scared of you.”  _

_ Azula shakes her head. She glares at her mother. The woman doesn’t help. She never helps. Just as always she leaves. Vanishes right when she could use someone the most, right when she needs someone to help her save herself. _

_ “He doesn’t love you.” Ozai sneers. _

_ “Rikka?” _

_ “You’re a waste of his time.” _

_ “Rikka?” _

_ “And he’s a waste of yours.” _

_ She feels a hand on her shoulder.  _

_ “Get rid of him and make something of yourself.” She sees the fire come to his palm and bunches in on herself. _

_ “Rikka what’s going on?” He carefully rolls her over to face him. He doesn’t quite get her there. She lies on her back staring at the ceiling, at the things swirling around on the ceiling. Tears drip down her cheeks and make trails towards her ears. _

_ Her body feels limp and heavy. Weighted and somehow distant.  _

_ And why now?  _

_ Why now, when everything is going alright? _

_ The shadows on the wall twist. She doesn’t feel real. For a moment she doesn’t remember where she is. For a moment it doesn’t matter because it isn’t real anyways. That would explain it well--why she had been so happy. Because it wasn’t real. None of it. Likely she has been alone this whole time and Hajime is exactly what she wants so he is exactly what her mind has conjured up for her... _

_ “Can I hold you?” _

_ She isn’t sure why he would want to. _

_ It is because he isn’t real. _

_ She makes some sort of attempt to put herself in his arms. He does the rest for her, scooping her into his grasp and propping her up against his body. He holds her head against his chest. His heartbeat is nice. It’s steady. It’s rhythmic. It isn’t hectic and crazed like her own.  _

_ She feels his hand. It smooths over her hair and rubs up and down on her back. It is real. It is there. They--the hallucinations, she forces herself to admit--can’t touch her. They can reach out but they never touch her. They never try and when she tries to touch them, friendly or otherwise, they disperse.  _

_ Hajime is real. _

_ He has been real.  _

_ He kisses her forehead. “What’s going on?” He asks again.  _

_ “I…” She swallows back a sob before it can come out again. “Where’s Atsu?” Agni, she hopes he isn’t home.  _

_ “Don’t worry, he’s spending the night with his friend Minko.” He gives her a little squeeze. For a moment she can better hear his heartbeat. She closes her eyes and listens to it. He brushes her tears away with his thumbs. She tries to match her breathing up with the beat of his heart. Slow and steady. Even and level.  _

_ He is quiet.  _

_ Patient.  _

_ He waits for her to lift her head from his chest before saying anything more. And when he does speak it is much more light-hearted than she anticipated. He cupping her face in his hands and holds her formerly drooping head up. “That position looks terribly uncomfortable.” _

_ He isn’t wrong. She has legs bent back in an awkward ‘w’ and her arms between them, just barely propping her up. She pulls her legs in and draws them up to her chest. Some of the tension loosens.  _

_ “Better?”  _

_ She nods. “A little.”  _

_ “Do you want to sit on the deck, get some fresh air?”  _

_ She nods again.  _

_ “You don’t have to tell me what that was, but you can if it will help.”  _

_ She is still somewhat shaky when she gets to her feet. Her head still dizzy and foggy. She thinks that it might help. She is keeping enough secrets from the man as it is. She bites her lip. Maybe they are right. Maybe she doesn’t deserve him if she can’t even tell him the truth. _

_ “I’m insane.” She mumbles.  _

_ He brings her to a halt, stands before her, and firmly clasps his hands around her shoulders. She can feel her head dipping again but she is too tired to hold it upright. “You aren’t…” _

_ “I hear things that aren’t there. Sometimes nothing feels real. Sometimes I feel like everyone is plotting against me. I’m insane.” _

_ Hajime inhales. “I’ve known you for a year now. I think that it’s safe to say that this sort of thing isn’t exactly character defining.”  _

_ “This is the first time I wasn’t able to ignore it well. I see them a lot. More often them you know. I can just block them out…” _

_ “Come on.” He hoists her into his arms and carries her outside. He finds his favorite porch bench and sits, cradling her in his lap. “You can tell me when you see them, you know that right? Even if it’s something little.”  _

_ “There’s something wrong with me…”  _

_ If only she could be normal. If only she could have held out just a little longer. Held out until a day when he wasn’t around to witness it.  _

_ “You don’t have to be okay all the time. You’re allowed to be hurt.” _

_ She bunches her hands up in the folds of his shirt.  _

_ “I can’t imagine you’re the only one who has some…” he furrows his brows. “Some damage. I’ve heard of soldiers with a lot of similar struggles. War does things to people, Rikka. Especially if you just keep it all inside.” He lightly taps the side of her head. “That’s not good for you. Even if you’re happy,  _ really  _ happy, that stuff is still sitting there in the back of your head waiting for an excuse to come up.” _

_ “But nothing happened! Nothing brought it up!” _

_ He nods, “yeah, sometimes if it sits for too long it just happens.” He rubs his face. “I never talked about how my wife died. I saw it happen and I pretended like I didn’t. I was always happy for Seukhyun and our crew because someone had to be. I didn’t think about it...until I did.” He pauses. “And then it just hits. I let it sit quiet for so long that it hit hard.”  _

_ “My name isn’t even Rikka! How am I supposed to talk about this when I can’t even tell you my real name?” She feels the heat on her palms and, Agni, does she want to unleash it. Her mind. Agni, it is in such disarray that she can’t even… _

_ “You can try. You don’t have to tell me your real name. You don’t have to tell me anything about your past that you don’t want to. Just tell me something so I can help you.”  _

_ Maybe it is because her mind has betrayed her once more.  _

_ Maybe it is simply because he is Hajime. _

_ Because he didn’t push her.  _

_ But she tells him about her mother and about her father. About Mai and TyLee. And something about Zuko, changing names where she sees fit. Thank Agni no one ever truly knew Azula. _

_ He doesn’t put the pieces together. Somehow she feels as though she has only secured her secret. Princess Azula is perfect. Nothing is wrong with Princess Azula. But Azula is unstable, hurt, and worn. Azula is lost. And Rikka is all of that. But Rikka is cared for.  _

_ Rikka is loved.  _

_ Hajime hugs her tighter. “You haven’t told anyone else any of this, have you?”  _

_ She shakes her head. “You don’t have to fix me Hajime. I need to…” _

_ “That’s why you wander, isn’t it?” _

_ She nods. “Something like that.”  _

_ “I guess that you’ll have some people to wander with you then.” _

_ “I want to stay here. I like it here. I think that…” She trails off. “I have a family?” _

_ Hajime smiles. “You have family and friends and a pet mongoose-lizard.”  _

_ “I’ll tell you one day.” _

_ “Tell me what?” _

_ “My real name.”  _

_ He laughs, “I don’t mind waiting.” He reaches into her pocket and draws out the stone, a small betrothal gem now fixed upon its center. “We have quite a while, yes?” _

_ Azula nods.  _

_ She may not have been able to tell him her name, but he knows who she is. He knows Azula better than anyone who does know her name.  _

_ That day she learns what it is to be loved. Accepted.  _

_ She learns to let her walls down, even if it is only to a single soul.  _

  
  


**.oOo.**

She is surprised to see him standing in her doorway again. She supposes that she shouldn’t be, he has visited her at least once, usually twice, a day. Even still, she was certain that her impulsive antics would have driven him well away. 

“You told Zuzu about the other night.” She remarks. 

He shakes his head. “Not me. There are kind of a lot of people talking about that.” 

Azula cringes. 

“It’s not all bad stuff.” He grins. “They said that you inher...are a great actress.” 

“They said that I inherited my mother’s acting abilities.” She replies plainly. “Be forward with me, Sokka. I’m not delicate.”

“I know that.” He smiles. “It’s just that Zuko mentioned that you don’t like talking about that.” 

The man’s face is fully flushed, she ought to show him at least a little mercy so she gives the discussion a dismissive wave. “What did you come here to tell me?” 

“I was actually going to ask you if you, maybe wanted to go do another activity. But this time it won’t be weird.” 

“Sure, Sokka. We can do another activity. What do you have in mind?”

“I thought that I’d let you pick this time.”

“My idea of a good time is going to the library and…”

He perks up. “It just so happens that I enjoy a good library. As long as it remains above ground.”

Azula quirks a brow. “And why wouldn’t it?”

“Oh you know, because it’s in the middle of a desert!” He gives a wide and exaggerated sweeping gesture. “And it’s guarded by a crazy, angry owl spirit.”

“Right. Well we don’t have ‘crazy’ owl spirits in our libraries and we aren’t in a desert so I’d wager that we’ll be staying perfectly above ground.” She rises and pushes her chair in. “I’ll send for you when I am dressed.” 

**.oOo.**

By send for him, he didn’t realize that she meant she’d send herself. “That was quick.” 

Azula shrugs. “I didn’t bother with the spa this time around. I’m not in a pampering mood today.”

“Then what kind of mood are you in?” 

She is quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure exactly.” There is something in her eyes, something distant. He doesn’t think that she is lying but he isn’t sure that she is being entirely truthful.

“You sure about that?” 

Another silence. “I’ll be fine, Sokka.” 

Curious word choice. He doesn’t call her on it. “Alright, so let's go to this library.” He follows her through the crowd. “What are you planning on reading about?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“I’m planning on trying to read about Fire Nation swords. Maybe learn a thing or two about the stuff like what Master Piandao taught me!” 

“Okay.”

“You’re quiet today.”

“I’m always quiet, Sokka.”

“Not when you’re talking about battle tactics and Zuko’s newly implemented policies.” 

“We aren’t talking politics or strategies right now. I like to think that I’ve learned to separate that talk from small talk.” 

He laughs. “Yeah, according to TyLee you’ve gotten a lot better at talking to people.” 

She nods. 

“So why don’t you show off your new social skills?”

  
“They aren’t exactly new anymore.” She replies. “And I’m not in a talking mood. 

Sokka frowns. “Is this about the other night? You don’t have to pretend like you had a good time if…”

“It’s not about the other night. It’s not about you at all.” 

**.oOo.**

As charming and semi-comforting as his concern is, she wishes that he would stop pushing. Spirits, the man is persistent in his badgering. Though she supposes that she understands his concern. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” She reiterates. 

His expression doesn’t lighten up any. 

“Don’t get so gloomy.” 

“Sorry.” Sokka mumbles. “It’s just hard for me to be happy when…”

When she’s sucking the joy from the atmosphere around them. At this point even if she faked a smile he’d know that it’s all bullshit. Though he did say that she is a perfectly capable actress. “I’ll...try to enjoy myself. I won’t make any promises though.”

This is enough, the tribesman is smiling again. “Great, because I was planning on making sure that you had a good day.”

She manages a small smile of her own. It has been some time since anyone has so deliberately tried to lift her mood. 

He wiggles his brows. “I think that it’s working.” 

“Don’t push your luck.” She rolls her eyes as she leans into the large door of the library. “The books on Fire Nation swordsmanship is in the military section. I can show you where that is, I’ve read most of those books already.”

They wander past a grumbling man with frizzy, greying hair reading a scroll about mechanics and past a pregnant woman and her wailing daughter. The disheveled old man cuts mother a glare while one of several librarians bumps into a scrawny teenaged boy. 

Sokka stops to help her pick up the scrolls. 

“Oh! Princess!” She gives a slight bow. “Is everything to your liking? If I’d have known you’d be coming by I would have had your usual spot reserved. I can get it ready for you.”

“That’s fine Quin-Mei. I’ll be showing Sokka around.” 

“Well if there’s anything that I can do to make you comfortable, let me know.” 

“Of course.” 

“You don’t have to be so formal…” Sokka says after the woman leaves. 

“It’s called politeness. Do you have that in the tribes?”

“We have so much politeness in the tribes!” He declares. 

Azula cringes, her cheeks flashing a slight pink. “Quiet, Sokka, we’re in a library.” The man truly does have a habit of embarrassing the both of them.

His face goes red but not quite as red as the fizzy-haired man’s. He picks up his scrolls with an agitated grumble and shuffles to the check out desk. 

“Hey Azula, look what I found!” Sokka declares. “Someone hid this scroll in with the military ones.” 

He unfurls a children’s tale. The Dragon & The Crane. Azula swallows, it is more than enough to deliver the final blow. 

It just so happens that he has found the first Fire Nation children’s tale that she had read to Atsu as she tucked the boy into bed.

She tries to keep the conversation going, but she can feel herself fading. Fading until she is only partially engaged in the conversation. She doesn’t quite remember reading anything neither does she really recall walking home. 

**.oOo.**

He has to admit to himself that he is nervous. He isn’t even sure what he has done this time. But then, he gets the suspicion that he hasn’t done anything at all. Earth Kingdom travels or none, she is still Azula. She still has her moods and her reservations. He stuffs his hands into his pockets, if all it takes to upset her is to get a little too loud in a library then maybe she hasn’t changed as much as he had anticipated.

Or maybe it is that she can only handle so much secondhand embarrassment.

He ought to leave her to fume silently, but he can’t bring himself to leave the situation so open. She can at least tell him why she went so abruptly cold and silent. He thinks that it will drive him mad if she doesn’t. 

He hears her before he even reaches her room. Her cries aren’t muffled, not even slightly masked. His heart drops. 

Why had he assumed that she was mad? Raava, he is dull minded. Why hadn’t he even thought that she might simply be having an off day? He slaps his own forehead, she had told him that it  _ had  _ nothing to do with him. Thank the spirits that he hadn’t just thrown her door open and prattled off his grievances. 

He hesitates in the doorway, she has left it wide open. She is curled up on the bed clutching that stuffed badger-mole tighter than she has gripped anything. Her face is partially buried in the worn fabric. He wonders if he should turn around, he very clearly remembers Katara mentioning that the last time she was ‘off’ she blasted lightning at Zuko and breathed fire. 

But that was then.

That was a long time ago.

Against his better judgement he clears his throat.

Azula looks up from the badger-mole. He expects her to chuck the thing at him, to tell him to leave. Instead she squeezes her eyes shut and grits her teeth. 

“Can I sit down?” 

She pats the mattress next to her. 

“I didn’t do anything, did I?”

She rolls onto her back and her shirt hikes up ever so slightly. Just enough for him to see the edge of another scar that runs across her belly. She drapes the badger-mole over her eyes and takes a sharp breath. 

“It’s alright, I’m not judging.” He says. Though it is strange to see her so openly vulnerable. Even still he can see her trying to slow her tears. “I promise, I’m not. If you want to cry, just cry. I won’t even tell Zuko.”

And she does. He thinks that she might be crying harder still. He has an urge to reach out, he lifts his hand from the mattress but stops short, thinking better of it. She was never the touching, cuddling sort. 

“They’re dead, Sokka. They’re all dead.” 

He cringes. 

Clearly the wound has reopened. He doesn’t think that had ever been stitched. 

With a hard swallow he asks, “who are they and what happened?” 

  
She squeezes the badger-mole, her lower lip quivers. “Hajime. They killed Hajime. And Atsu. And...they’re all  _ dead _ .” 


	14. Juro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this chapter is going to be much heavier. And it will include death and blood. Nothing graphic but some sensitive themes including the deaths of children. If this isn’t something you’re comfortable with you might want to skip the flashback part or the chapter as a whole.

_ Azula leans over the rails of the bridge. The deep summer air blows through her locks. They have grown long again. She supposes that she has regained enough dignity to not warrant cutting it once more.  _

_ She takes a deep breath. She is going to tell him today. She is going to tell him everything. She thinks that it is quite long overdue. Especially now, she smooths her hands over the stretched fabric of her shirt. The world around her smells of moss and pine. It smells fresh and new.  _

_ Her feet thud against the wooden planks of the bridge as she crosses it. Hajime...her house isn’t so far from the woodland but her feet are already plenty sore from having stood on them for so long. By the time she reaches her porch they are throbbing rather incessantly.  _

_ “Mom!” Atsu shouts and throws himself at her legs. She braces herself against the doorframe as Hajime calls for him to slow down and be careful. Atsu never had known how to slow down. He is practically bouncing up and down as he pulls on her arm, “look what I made! Look at it! Look at it!” He gives her several more tugs and leads her to the nursery. It isn’t quite ready yet; the crib has been assembled and filled with many cozy, handmade blankets and pillows and a few toys rest at the foot of it, ready to be played with. They have yet to build a changing table and there are several stuffed animals that she would like to have sewn.  _

_ “Look!” Atsu grins. “I made posters for him!”  _

_ She has long since given up on trying to tell him to not get attached to the idea of having a brother when he very well could have a sister instead. _

_ He holds up his first painting, “this is a tigerdillo and this one’s me, you, and dad...and this one is Bao fighting Fire Lord Bonsai and…”  _

_ Azula quirks a brow. “You’ve been working hard.” _

_ “He’s making his sibling an art gallery.” Hajime laughs.  _

_ “I can see that.” She replies. She picks up one of the paintings. “Where do you want to hang this one?” _

_ “The ceiling!” Atsu declares.  _

_ “Alright, if you can get it up there, you can hang it from the ceiling.” _

_ Atsu blinks. “No, mom, you put it up there!” He flashes her a wide grin.  _

_ “Your mom needs to take it easy, Atsu.”  _

_ “I can handle a simple task like that just fine.”  _

_ “I know that you can, but it wouldn’t kill you to just relax, would it?”  _

_ If boredom could induce death, she is sure that it would kill her. She puts her hands on her hips and gives a slight pout. She supposes that her back is rather sore and she  _ had  _ just taken quite a decent walk… _

_ Hajime comes to stand behind her and rest his chin on her shoulder. He takes her hand and guides it over the bump. It still leaves her feeling slightly perturbed to feel the baby kick against her touch. It is a reminder that it is all real. That she isn’t making it all up.  _

_ On some days, the rougher days feeling that little kick is what makes her feel real. Though daunting and frightening in its own right, it is grounding. It is a constant when Hajime isn’t around to help her.  _

_ But on her worst days, the kicking only adds to the unrest and disconnect in her mind. It takes her to a place where her body is not her own, where someone else pulls the strings and she is only a husk… _

_ Today is a pleasant day. Today she feels a sense of security in the little kicks. At the very least, she is growing used to them. Hajime kisses her neck while she watches Atsu attempt to walk up the wall. He takes a running start, manages to take perhaps two or three admirable steps up the wall before falling on his rear with a loud, “owie!”  _

_ “Okay, wall!” He declares, pointing a finger at it. “Get ready to get climbed!” He very confidently stomps back up to it and tries a second time. And a third before Hajime finally remarks, “alright, how about we try hanging your pictures somewhere else?” _

_ While the man goes to help their son, she makes her way into their bedroom and lies down. She takes off her shoes and lowers herself upon the mattress. She rests her hand atop her belly and absently rubs her hand over the bump. She isn’t sure how to or when she should begin telling him who she is. She just knows that it has to be done tonight, before she loses her mustered courage.  _

**_.oOo._ **

_ She watches Atsu and Caihong teeter after a glowing plume of fireflies. The critters are all over the place tonight, gathering in swamps. It must be the height of their mating season. And how the trees sparkle with them. She has seen the bugs in the Fire Nation but the cicadas usually outnumber them and she has never had the pleasure of watching them tuck themselves into such thick canopies.  _

_ “So, how are things coming along?” Seukhyun asks.  _

_ Azula drums her fingers against her belly, “as smoothly as they can be I suppose.” Though she can certainly do without the aches and pains and the occasional need to update her wardrobe.  _

_ “Good to hear.” He replies. “Ojihara misses having your help with the planting and harvesting. It certainly isn’t as fun for me without being able to compete with you.” _

_ She gives the thought a lazy little hand wave, “you can certainly stop by any time and beg for my help. Of course, when I say yes you will have to provide me with plenty of refreshments.”  _

_ “I think that Ojihara and I can work something out.”  _

_ “Wonderful.” She claps her hands together. “The baby is partial to pineapple juice.”  _

_ “The baby or Rikka?” Seukhyun quirks a brow.  _

_ It is the both of them really. Hajime wanders up the porch steps. “I think that I’ve caught enough fireflies to light up our whole bedroom for the night. And that’s without Atsu’s contribution.”  _

_ “How many did Cai catch?” Seukhyun asks.  _

_ “Way too many. In fact she told me to go get you so that she can show you.” _

_ Seukhyun rises and stretches his arms. “I’ll talk with Ojihara tonight and see if we can get you some light duty work and some pineapple juice.”  _

_ Azula gives him a thumbs up.  _

_ “You’re trying to go back to work?” _

_ Azula shrugs. “It isn’t too hard to pluck a few turnips.” _

_ “Under the scorching sun?” _

_ “I’m a firebender and so is the baby.” She declares, pridefully turning her chin up and gesturing to her tummy. “I can feel it.” _

_ Hajime laughs. “If you say so. But don’t be upset when our baby grows up and starts throwing rocks.” _

_ “I won’t. It’s a fire baby. Only a fire baby would be this intense.” And intense things have been. Her cravings are quite ravenous and her spells of nausea can be rather overwhelming. She has only complained of them as often as she can. Only a fire baby can be so extreme.  _

_ She waits for Hajime to fill Seukhyun’s empty chair. She waits a little longer after that, watches the fireflies drift care-free and enchantingly. At least she speaks, “I have something to tell you.”  _

_ “What’s that?”  _

_ She clears her throat. “First, tell me that you will hear me out entirely.” _

_ “I can do that.” _

_ “No interruptions. No questions until I am finished.” Her stomach grows jittery, doubly so with the baby squirming about. _

_ “No interruptions or questions, Rikka.”  _

_ She takes a deep breath. “Not Rikka.” She pauses. Another deep breath. “My name isn’t Rikka.”  _

_ He smile softly and gives her a nod of understanding. He waits so very patiently for her to continue. She supposes that, that in itself makes a difference. He interlocks his hand with hers.  _

_ She opens her mouth but the silence is stolen by a sharp cry from Caihong and a loud curse from Seukhyun. Atsu cries out too. Hajime grips her hand tighter and stands up. She with him. “Rikka, sit down.” He knows very well that she has no plans to do anything of the sort.  _

_ She sees it on the treeline, a small and efficient blaze. “I’m good with fire, Hajime. You need me.” _

_ “I need you and the baby to be safe.” _

_ “We will be.” She replies rather flippantly. She can’t run as fast as she had some six months ago and her balance isn’t so enviable. But she can still out pace Hajime.  _

_ Seukhyun carries both of the children, his face red and horrified. “They’re burning and razing the village.”  _

_ Azula’s stomach drops.  _

_ “Why would the Fire Nation…?” Hajime starts. _

_ She shakes her head. “This isn’t a Fire Nation attack. There would be a lot more fire than this.”  _

_ “It’s them, Hajime.” Seukhyun huffs. “They’re back.” _

_ “Who?” _

_ “The Gemsbok Bulls.” He shouts over a wailing Caihong. _

_ “Who are they?”  _

_ “They’re the army faction responsible for the last massacre.” Hajime answers grimly. _

_ “I reckon they want vengeance.”  _

_ Hajime throws the door open. They are inside already. “Shit.” Seukhyun hisses. He backs out of the doorway. She sees the arrow pierce his head, a shot so skilled, so mighty that it goes in through one ear and nearly out the other. He pitches over, Caihong and Atsu topple with him.  _

_ “Daddy!” Caihong screeches.  _

_ Azula yanks her back, she and Atsu both. Her stomach cramps and she winces. She turns and kicks a ring of fire at the men who are already inside of her home. She doesn’t think that Hajime has taken notice of her attack. She doesn’t have the luxury of dwelling on it, the dull ache becomes quite intense, involuntary tears prickle behind her eyes.  _

_ The men duck and Hajime lurches forward, landing a sturdy punch to the man’s ribs. It is enough to rattle his armor and knock him off of his feet. His combatant catches Hajime by the jaw. Azula tosses her best fireball at the man. He staggers back as an arrow whizzes past her head.  _

_ Decidedly, the archer is the deadliest foe. _

_ She has to take the archer out.  _

_ “Hold them off, Hajime.”  _

_ “What are you doing?” _

_ “Just hold them off.” She throws herself outside and throws up a wall of fire. The arrow turns to ash before it can reach her. She waits for another to fly. If she can take the archer down then she can get Atsu and Caihong out of this. She catches a flash in the treeline. She throws up another line of fire and readies her lightning. The arrow disintegrates, her fire falls, and her lightning discharges. The sound of the woman’s body dropping is lost beneath a crack of thunder.  _

_ “Atsu! Caihong! Get out here!”  _

_ She gets answer from neither and her anxious queasiness swells. She lurches back inside, Agni she is so tired. The ache in her belly is growing to be quite searing. The baby’s kicking is insufferable. She grits her teeth and presses a heated hand to her tummy, it does nothing to soothe the babe this time.  _

_ “Mama!” Atsu shouts.  _

_ Hajime is on the ground, arm pinned beneath a boulder, nose bleeding. _

_ “Ya got’a new wife?” Speaks the largest of the soldiers. His eyes--one blind and one a vivid green--flicker from she to Hajime.  _

_ “I won’t let you take her from me too.” He winces.  _

_ The soldier gives a bellowing laugh before another boulder crashes through their wall and drops onto his other hand. Atsu shrieks again. She can’t find Caihong. “And how are you going to stop me from under there? You can’t help her.” _

_ “I can help myself just fine.” She promises. She takes down the men behind her first. Normally she would reach back and launch them over her shoulders but the bump is in the way. Instead she raises her arms and lets two bursts of fire rise from her palms. The men stumble back.  _

_ The soldier throws Atsu to the side, the boy lands with a thump and a whimper. She knows now that she will have the man dead. He throws himself at her, she lets him lumber forward before taking a quick step out of the way. She takes a sturdy stane and catches him by the arm. She hears his shoulder pop and she pulls him back towards her.  _

_ The other two soldiers rise. And now she is torn between fending for herself and keeping them away from Atsu and Hajime. Her first fire whip, buckles the man reaching for Atsu. Her second strikes the half-blind soldier. His blade grazes across her neck as he falls back.  _

_ Her heart races as a slowly flowing curtain of blood trickles down her neck and to her chest. She slams another fireball into him for good measure. Her baby gives another violent kick, she wills the poor thing to hang in there. She is almost finished.  _

_ The third soldier, a woman, she notices, has made it to Hajime. She shoves the half-blind soldier aside and charges the woman. She dodges a wall of rock, blasts it away. She knows that Hajime has seen this time, and how could he not have? _

_ That rush of blue fire is the last thing he sees before the soldier scowls and brings a larger rock down to crush his throat. And Azula hopes, at the very least, that he got to know--even if for only an instant--the real her. She dreads that his last thoughts were ones of hatred and regret over having slept with the Fire Nation’s very worst.  _

_ Atsu’s piercing cries barely register as the light leaves Hajime’s eyes. His final exhale whistles through her like a spirit. She doesn’t scream neither does she cry. She isn’t given the decency. Several more soldiers pour into the house. They seize her, pin her hands behind her back and the half blind soldier steps forward. He holds a blade to the top of her belly. Drags the cool metal down it, cutting a hole through her shirt as it goes. And when he reaches the bottom of her bump he takes pause. “I was hoping to to open you up in front of him...for old time’s sake. But…” He gestures to Hajime’s lifeless body. “You’ve deprived me of the pleasure. You and her both.” _

_ The Earth Kingdom woman has just enough time to process his words. Just enough time to let her eyes go wide. She is dead as soon as the boulder bashes her into the one she’d killed Hajime with.  _

_ His attention comes back to her, the blade bites deeper into her stomach and he swipes it horizontally. The tears come forward with a second rush of blood. And with her tears and blood comes another rush. _

_ She screams. Her shout comes out as fire. The man stumbles back, clutching his face. She can see the blood seeping through his fingers. She hopes that he is suffering greatly. He must be. Only pure pain can induce the rage that drives a man to growl and growls give the belly of a pregnant woman a good kick.  _

_ She doesn’t remember what happened after that. She only remembers agony to a degree that she has never felt before or since. It comes from her body, from the baby’s body, and from her mind. _

_ That night she learns what it is to die.  _

**.oOo.**

Sokka’s mouth runs dry. His eyes drift from the badgermole to the scar on her neck and then the partially exposed scar on her belly. He takes her hand and squeezes it as he fumbles for something to say. Anything at all. 

Yet nothing sounds right in his mind. Because it isn’t okay and it won’t be. Some things just aren’t okay. He considers that a good majority of the things that have happened in her life will never be okay. Why else would she have run from those things, those places. 

He swallows. “I’m glad that you’re here now.” He tries. 

She grits her teeth and wipes at her eyes. 

“I’m glad that you’re here and not wandering out there alone somewhere.” 

She draws a shaky breath as he recalls her mention of a long trip home. A long,  _ lonely  _ trip home. He recalls her joyful smile that night at the theater. That enthusiastic twinkle in her eyes. He wonders how many times Hajime got to see that.

And he wonders how she has managed to hide all of that hurt. How it had even been possible to bury it out of sight. How, up until now, she has been so composed. How she is still able to smile at all.

She is resilient. 

He wishes that she wouldn’t have to be.

He isn’t sure if he should but hugs her tightly. If she hates it she can always shove him away. She doesn’t. In fact, she presses her face against his chest and bunches her hands in the folds of his clothes. He squeezes her. He can’t take the pain away, but he can try.

She still sobs so openly. 

The sort of gut-wrenchingly hunting cries that only true loss can bring. 

“Sokka, what’s going on.” Zuko’s face is grim. Concerned. “She’s not…” he trails off. “Is she?” 

“It’s a long story, Zuko.”

“I have time.” 

“I should let Azula tell you herself.” He rubs small circles on her back. 

**.oOo.**

Zuko has tea and a hot meal waiting for her but she hasn’t the appetite for even a single bite. She stares at her palms. She feels rather numb. She thinks that she would rather feel numb. It is better than feeling grief. 

“I was going to name it Juro.” She whispers more to herself, vacantly she trails her pointer along the scar. She feels herself slumping over again. Zuko catches her and holds her upright. 

“What are you talking about, Azula?”

She shakes her head. She was going to do a lot of things. She was going to tell Hajime her name. She was going to tell Ojihara and Seukhyun. She was going to be Azula again. She was going to teach Juro to firebend. She was going to teach him about Fire Nation culture. She was going to breakup squabbles when Juro tried to snatch Bao from Atsu. She was going to bring them all to see the palace one day. She was going to make a life where they could vacation to Ember Island and return to Wujing after.

She was going to be happy.

She was going to heal. 

She is furious and tormented.

She is more wounded than before.

“At least have a sip.” Zuko tries gently. She absently picks up the teacup and gives it a small sip. 

She squeezes her eyes shut and swallows down an unreleased sob. The tears still leak out. Sokka cups his hand over hers. 

“What happened, Azula?” Zuko asks again. 

She rises, she isn’t quite steady but she makes it to her nightstand. She rummages through it and pulls out her journal. She drops it into his lap and drops herself back onto the mattress. 

It is much easier to just let him read it. She isn’t up for speaking of it a second time. She rolls onto her side and bunches herself up, nauseous with stress and mourning. It settles quite heavily that she hasn’t processed it. Not truly. 

Zuko tucks himself into the corner and begins reading. 

“I don’t know if this will help at all.” Sokka starts. “But I lost someone too.”

“Suki?” 

Sokka shakes his head. “No, not Suki. Suki’s still around, she just decided to focus on Kyoshi Warrior stuff instead of a relationship. I lost someone named Yue.”

Azula is quiet for a very long time, trying to figure out why he is trying to make this about him. Empathy, she remembers. He is being empathetic. She supposes that there isn’t much else he can say anyways. But that doesn’t stop him from trying. 

“I promise that you don’t have to go through this alone.”

And she supposes that, that means something. 

It means almost everything. 

She promised herself on that day in the plains, that she wouldn’t let herself wander through everything on her own. 

It means absolutely everything. 

He was the first person to make her feel truly alive in a very long time. 

She rolls over to face him and reaches for whatever is steaming on the plate. She sits up as Sokka hands it to her. She should take care of herself. She likes to think that she is solidly past the catatonic stage. 

“I know.” She finally says.

She has waited too long to reply, “Huh?”

“I know that I’m...not alone.” She clarifies. And she thinks that, that very well might be the only reason that she is willing to sit up and eat. She thinks of her first night home, of the well wishes she had been given and of the warm welcome back. She thinks of awkward game nights with Mai and TyLee. She thinks of sparring sessions with Zuko. Mostly she thinks of story swapping with Sokka and a very humiliating and liberating night at a theater. 

She thinks of life.

Of the things that she is still going to do. 

Even if she can’t bring herself to do those things now. 


	15. A Beacon Of Misfortune

_ When she wakes she isn’t truly so. She is mostly dazed. Dazed with pain and numbness. There is a physical emptiness to accompany it. She can’t feel the baby’s kick. She already knows that she won’t be feeling it again.  _

_ She could cry out for help. Could stumble her way out of the house, clutching her bleeding belly. But she doesn’t have a reason to. Instead she crawls over to Atsu and cradles him in her arms. He is so still. She can’t handle it. She carries him over to Hajime and lays him atop the man’s chest.  _

_ She still can’t find Caihong. _

_ She doesn’t think that she wants to.  _

_ She nuzzles herself up against Hajime to the best of her ability with those loathsome boulders in the way. And she stays there. For a very long time she stays there. _

_ She stays there until an army from Chin comes to survey the wreckage, recover bodies, and rescue survivors.  _

_ They rescue her but she wouldn’t call herself a survivor.  _

_ She thinks that most of her is dead.  _

_ All of the parts that matter anyhow.  _

_ Yet they lift her away from Hajime and Atsu anyways with a promise to help her give them a proper and honorable burial. She wants them to pitch her into the hole and bury her with them.  _

_ She is mostly delirious. She doesn’t quite remember much of the trip to Chin. She doesn’t think that there is anything to recollect she was too far away for it to have meant anything. And now she is tired.  _

_ Tired and as alone as she has ever been.  _

_ No one comes to hold her hand and make her sickbed more tolerable. No one is left to come for her. _

_ She thinks of Min-Min, of her small medicine tent and she wonders if the woman has perished as well. She flexes her ankle. She didn’t think that she would be seeing Min-Min much after than but then Atsu had a fever. And then she...she… _

_ She holds her hand to her belly, freshly stitched and bathed.  _

_ Freshly and suddenly vacated.  _

_ She screams.  _

_ Anger. Terror. Rage.  _

_ Mostly rage.  _

_ She had been okay. She had been better. She was fixing herself. She had plans; perhaps it was going to be years, decades maybe, after the birth of her baby, but she was going to go home. She was going to go home and resolve things left unfinished. She was going to be okay.  _

_ Why can’t she be okay? _

_ She thinks that maybe it is because she isn’t allowed. _

_ She has done too much wrong...killing the Avatar doesn’t make for good karma, even if he ended up living.  _

_ She can’t do it. She doesn’t want to. Her fingers graze the stitch work. It would only take one hard yank and...her screams have drawn attention. She feels a hand come around her wrist. “Don’t mess with that.” The woman says. “In fact we should get this bandaged, I don’t know why it hasn’t been already.”  _

_ The woman is kind to her. They are all kind and tentative. They tell her their names as they tend to her wounds and make promises that she will be fine in time. They tell her their names, yes, but she makes a point to not remember them. She doesn’t want to get attached. One way or another the things she gets attached to leave her.  _

_ The stress and the sorrow make her sick. Physically so, her head hurts constantly and her stomach is always upset. Though that can be the product of losing her baby. She isn’t sure. She doesn’t care. She is ready to be lost too.  _

_ On most nights Azula screams. She cries. She has fits until the doctors sedate her, she welcomes it, it is the only peace she can get. And it is a false serenity. A numb serenity. On most nights she relives it all again. On most nights she sees their faces.  _

_ Hajime’s, Atsu’s, Caihong’s, and Seukhyun’s. Mostly she sees the face of the half-blind soldier and the woman. _

_ She will find them both.  _

_ She will find them and pick them apart in ways that only the throes of grief-induced insanity can show her. She will kill the both of them and then she will show herself out--let Vaatu tangle her in his coil his dark, spirit tendrils around her and drag her off to his domain.  _

_ She grips her face in her hands, nails biting into her hairline. She can’t take it, truly she can handle no more. And just like the first time, there is no one to take her through it. No one to make it better.  _

_ And it is her own fault.  _

_ They would still be alive if she had just kept wandering.  _

_ She is a beacon for misfortune.  _

_ But she was born lucky, she remembers.  _

_ That day she learns...what’s the point in learning anything at all if all roads lead to the same dead end? _

**.oOo.**

If she listens hard enough she can still hear them. Mostly they remind her that they love her. Sometimes they blame her. They ask her why she didn’t save them. Deep down, even on the surface, she is aware that they would never say anything of the sort. But sometimes she can’t help but agree with them anyhow. 

Lately she can’t get them to stop and so she goes through most of her days quietly, hazily. Exhausted. 

“Hi, Azula!” TyLee greets.

Azula goes tense, she isn’t in the mood or place to power through another awkward, stumbling conversation however well meant it is. 

“Are you feeling any better?”

She isn’t at all. She starts to nod that she is, but she has hesitated for too long.

“What’s wrong.” 

“You can read the journal when Zuko is done with it.” She replies simply. She doesn’t need TyLee to know that she still hears things. She doesn’t need any of them to know that. 

“Mai and I were thinking of going to the hot springs today, do you want to come with?” 

She supposes that it is better than lingering at home. Maybe she can drown the voices out. Let them rise away with the steam. “Alright.” TyLee grins and flounces off before she can change her mind. Agni, she hopes that no one will ask her about the scar. Maybe she should just bathe in her robe, it will save the serving girls the trouble of one more article in the laundry. 

**.oOo.**

Azula leans back and exhales. The heat envelopes her body and the steam rolls off of her skin--that which is exposed anyhow. She splashes water over her face and tips her head back, back, back until only her face is on the surface. She pulls her head out of the water and lets it run in rivulets down her back. 

“It feels nice, doesn’t it?”

“Refreshing, yes.” Azula agrees.

“Well I don’t see a better way of spending the afternoon.” Mai shrugs. 

Azula can’t disagree, the churning and bubbling of the water is rather soothing and the kaleidoscope of soap aromas is charming enough. She relaxes back against the rocks. Her hair fans out and her robe billows. 

“Why are you still wearing your robe?” Mai asks.

“It’s comfortable.” She isn’t particularly lying, the fabric drifting and shifting with the flow of the water, quite pleasantly brushes her skin. Watching it ebb and flow is almost mesmerizing. It is lulling, her weary exhaustion metamorphs into a more languid, comforting tiredness. And maybe she is due for a good nap. 

She supposes that one day away from her rigid firebending regime couldn’t hurt her. In fact it very well may help. 

“It looks comfortable.” TyLee agrees.

Azula lifts her arm out of the water and her robe clings to it. 

“It might not be as comfortable when you get out.” Mai points out.

Azula shrugs. “I’ve had worse.” 

For a while she listens to Mai and TyLee talk amongst themselves. There is a sense of distant normalcy in hearing them chatter. She remembers days when they would make idle conversation as she poured over schemes and plans. She supposes that they always had a sort of chemistry that she was just on the outer fringes of. 

“Are you okay, Azula?” TyLee asks. 

“You seem distant.” Mai adds. 

“Just thinking.” She does that a lot. She does that too much. At least this time her thoughts are over things that she has mostly processed and forgotten. Mostly accepted. She toys with the drifting fabric. She is certain that the two of them have grown much closer in her absence. She isn’t sure that she really fits into the picture anymore, she isn’t sure that she ever truly had. She was a leader nothing more, nothing less. There might have been a bond, at least a small one but she hadn’t known how to make anything of it. They have a bond that she can’t...

“Are you sure that you’re okay?” TyLee asks again. 

She isn’t. 

“I’m alright.”

Maybe she should tell them the truth. Tell them that she ought to just keep her distance. 

“Sokka said that last night was rough.”

“Today isn’t last night. I am fine now.” Maybe she just needs to give it more time. Maybe she is seeing problems where there doesn’t have to be any. She misses Wu-Jing where things just happened naturally. Where they just fell into place. 

“Would you even tell us if something was wrong?” Mai sighs. 

Azula is quiet for a good while. “No. Not yet.” 

Mai nods. She doesn’t like the look TyLee gives her. The concern and the hurt. Even if trust wasn’t a factor she isn’t sure that she’d be able to talk about it a second time. She has ruined a perfectly relaxed mood. She dunks her head under the water again. “I am going to dry off.” 

“Okay.” TyLee smiles. “Maybe we can try this again when you’re feeling better.” 

“That sounds nice.” 

**.oOo.**

“How did it go with Mai and TyLee?” Sokka asks. 

“Well enough, I suppose.” She draws her legs onto the sofa and sits upon them. 

“You’re soaking wet.” He observes.

She ought to change her robes and ring her hair out. But she has already sat down. “We went to the springs.”

“And you left your robe on?” He quirks a brow. 

“TyLee would ask.” She shrugs. “About the scar.” She rubs her thumb against it. “I don’t want to answer questions.” 

“Okay, no questions.” He fixes her with a look, a strange one. Perhaps something mischievous. “Actually, one question. Do you like your pancakes with or without little smiley faces?”

“I like my pancakes served at breakfast time, not lunch time.” 

“Okay, but let's just say that some dashing, hilarious, and very charming fellow has made some pancakes. Do you want it to have a smiley face made out of fruits.” 

She rolls her eyes. “He can have full creative control.” 

“Smiley face it is!” He declares. 

She clears her throat. “While you do that, I am going to…” she gestures to her robe. He gives her a thumbs up and she makes her way to her bedroom. She discards her waterlogged robe and slips into a particularly oversized shirt and baggier pants. They are comfortable enough. 

She fixes her pendant around her neck and tucks it under her shirt. She picks up the stone next and rubs her thumb over its surface. She thinks that she will have it sewn into the badgermole. She thinks that she will sew it into the badgermole.

But she doesn’t know how to sew. She scoops the stone and the badgermole up and places them on her bed. 

**.oOo.**

“This would taste much better if it were breakfast time.”

Sokka rolls his eyes. “It would taste just the same!” 

She shakes her head, “my sense of taste is the strongest in the morning.”

“That’s not even possible?” But she says it with such a confidence that it might just be. “Did I do a good job?”

She looks down at the pancake. “This eye is lopsided. But it is fine. Also, this strawberry chunk isn’t in line with the rest of them.”

Sokka sighs and pushes that chunk slightly upwards. “Better?”

“Significantly.” She replies. He watches her pour a small helping of syrup over it. “Do you know how to sew, Sokka?”

“I know enough to patch up clothes if I have to. Why?”

“I have a project that I would like to work on. A patch will do just fine.” 

“Finish your pancake and I can get working on it.”

She shakes her head. “I want to do it. You show me how.” 

“Okay, I can do that.” He smiles. He hadn’t expected her to return the smile. She has a nice smile, a soft, pretty smile. He hopes that he can make it last.


	16. Phantom Kicks

_ All of her love has turned to hatred. It does so before she can stop it. And how easy it is to just let it happen. It was always there, that part of her. It was just waiting for an excuse to come back to the surface. And Agni has it been given a damn good one. They thought that she was a monster before… _

_ Oh they haven’t seen anything yet.  _

_ They haven’t… _

_ For a long time she doesn’t eat. She barely sleep. Hatred and rage is sustenance enough. It is the only thing that keeps her alive and moving. People talk to her, they are kind to her. She resents it. She hates their pity, the way they look at her.  _

_ She hates their hushed tones and speculative whispers as she walks by. “She’s from Wujing, didn’t the whole village get slaughtered?” “The poor woman.” “I heard that they found her covered in blood, holding her dead child.” “She was going to have a baby, wasn’t she?”  _

_ She leaves the infirmary as little as possible and when she does she goes in the night. In the night when she doesn’t have to listen to their recounts of what she has gone through. Where she doesn’t have to see their sympathetic stares.  _

_ And she still hurts. All over. Her head, her body, mostly her heart. Every now and then she can still feel a phantom kicking. When she does it is unbearable. When she does she loses herself entirely.  _

_ The whispering only grew worse and the pitying only doubled when her mind strayed from her more or less completely. When she slipped so far away that the phantom kicks became real. So far away that she’d rub her hand over her baby bump as though it weren’t vacant. For a moment, one cruel and blissful moment she had tricked herself into thinking that nothing had changed. That Hajime had brought her to the place for it’s more advanced medical practices.  _

_ Her due date had come to pass and her spell of disconnect with it. Since then they talk to her like a child, like she is fragile. Maybe she is fragile. She cries herself to sleep at night, the tears aren’t entirely born of grief, they are the product of a simmering hatred that has no other outlet. No other outlet short of setting everything in her path ablaze. But she can’t do that, not until she slowly burns the soldiers away, inch by incensing inch. She’ll let them institutionalize her after that. _

_ She’ll let them do whatever they want to her after that.  _

_ For the time she curls in on herself, clutching her hollow middle. The swell of her tummy is a cruel imitation and brutal reminder. And according to her doctors she is stuck with it for at least another five weeks.  _

_ On better days she gets visitors; well meaning strangers who bring her meals and company. She tries not to be cold but she can’t afford anything other than apathy. She won’t get close to anyone. _

_ Never again.  _

_ That week she learns that she has her limits. She has things that she simply can’t recover from. That hope and optimism are complete bullshit at best and completely terrifying at worst.  _

  
  


**.oOo.**

Azula holds the badgermole to her chest, the stone presses into her palm. Sokka observes her from across the bed as he arranges a few spools, needles, thimbles, and a pair of scissors. The thimbles are mostly for show, he doesn’t know how to use them effectively. He supposes that he’ll just take it like a man if he jabs his thumb with one of the needles. 

“So, what are we sewing?”

Azula holds up the badgermole. “I want to put the stone inside of it.” 

“Like a heart?” He asks. 

She shrugs, “something like that, I suppose.” 

“Alright, I think that we can manage that.” He smiles, “we’ll have to cut him open and then sew him back up. Or is it a girl badger-mole.”

Azula shrugs. “Both, I guess. Whichever Atsu was feeling for that day.” She looks off for a moment. “When Caihong got a hold of it, it was always a girl badger-mole.” 

Sokka laughs. “That sounds about right. Do you actually want to patch it up or do you just want to put the stone in and close the cut again?”

“I want to patch it up.” She replies to his surprise. She never struck him as the sewing sort. But he supposes that it takes more care to sew on a patch than it does to simply stitch in a straight line. Decidedly, her healing process is bizarre. But it sure beats several of the alternatives that he can think up. “Okay, so first thread the needle…”

She holds up a needle that has already been threaded. 

“Guess that’s common sense, huh?”

She nods. 

“Alright, well, you should probably cut it open and put the stone in.”

“I want to try it on something else first, I don’t want to ruin this it’s…it’s the…”

“I know what it is.” Sokka smiles sympathetically. “We’ll make sure that your sewing skills are perfect before we start on that.” 

And there’s that smile. The one that he was hoping to see again. Even if it is touched by sadness it is there. Maybe if he keeps at it, that sadness will leave entirely. 

**.oOo.**

He is refreshingly patient with her, granted she picks up on it rather fast. Sewing, she comes to find, takes precise movements and careful hands. She is good with that. She finds that she rather enjoys sewing. It is a peasant's work and her father would have so many things to say if he found her making a hobby of it. She wishes that she could shake his voice and repremiends from her mind. But they are always there, just as Hajime, Atsu, Juro, and all of them claw at her heart. 

She ties the last knot and severs the thread. She holds her freshly stitched badger-mole up. “I’m finished.” 

Sokka smiles. “Your lines are a lot less crooked than mine.”

Azula nods, “you couldn’t even put fruit on a pancake in a straight line.”

“Because I was going for a curved line!” Sokka declares. 

“And you ended up with a squiggly one.” She quirks a brow and thoughtlessly hugs the badger-mole to her chest. 

“That was the best pancake that you ever tasted and you know it!”

Her chest tightens some and her belly flutters. It has been so long since she has had a conversation like this. Something mundane and wholly pointless. She misses effortless small talk. And yet she finds herself alarmed. She is getting  _ too  _ close. 

She is getting too close and she isn’t sure that she wants to stop herself. Because, Agni, this beats the nagging and deeply rooted sorrow. It is so much less heavy and oppressive than clinging onto resentment. 

But she knows how it will end if she allows herself to get too close to Sokka. Or Mai, or TyLee, or anyone. Anyone save for Zuko, who is terribly reisaliant and hard to get rid of. She supposes that Zuzu is her safest bet for finding affection. 

“Seriously, though,” Sokka starts, “you’re really good at sewing, I can tell that you put a lot of care into that.”

“I put care into everything I do, Sokka. If you aren’t going to put effort into something, why bother with it?” If she isn’t going to put effort into her friendships why should she bother with them? She swallows. What is the point of a journey to a new kingdom if the lessons all go to waste?

“Can I see it?”

She hands the stuffed badger-mole to Sokka. He holds it only for a second or two before she beckons for him to hand it back. He doesn’t hesitate or beg for more time, it is in her hands as soon as she reaches for it. 

She clears her throat. “Thank you. For teaching me to sew.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t a problem at all. I had a nice time.” 

She did too.

She usually does when Sokka is involved. 

It is such a simple stupid thing. They haven’t even left the house and they had, had a good time. She recognizes the feeling. 

She is terrified of the feeling but she knows damn well that she can’t exponge it. 

Azula lays back and rests the badger-mole on her chest. 

“Maybe we can do it again some time?”

“Or something like it.” She replies. She tells herself that it is perfectly fine to have friends. That it is perfectly fine to seek someone to confide in and have nice evenings with. It doesn’t have to be anything more. 

It doesn’t have to be, but Agni she is well aware of what she wants. What she wants and fears all the same. 


	17. Someone To Listen

_ She finds herself lingering at the outskirts of Wujing, in front of the burned husks of the village. Partially, she wants to drink in her pain, to bask in her hatred and let it fester nice and fresh for when she begins hunting her prey. Mostly she is there to begin just that. She will find traces of them, track them down and eradicate them one by one. Nevermind the possibility that she will destroy her soul doing it. _

_ It is entirely vacant and with good reason; who would want to live on a street stained with the blood of their loved ones? Even a little over a month after the attack the air still smells of it. Smells of blood and traces of the fire. She is doubly sickened by the potent reminder of her past. Is this not what she had wanted--Earth Kingdom villages charred beyond recognition.  _

_ A fine ash has settled in the cracks in the pavement amid chunks of buildings and a scatter of charred bones. She finds herself a seat amid the burned skeletons and stares at them. Stares until there is nothing but seething and hatred. She studies them. Studies them until she can differentiate the males from the females, the children from the adults, and the adults. And there are children, so many small bones. Some skeletons cling to one another. At the very least this indicates that they were dead before they were burned.  _

_ When her hatred reaches a near boiling point, she picks herself up and moves forward. She walks past the old festival grounds, past the old bridge--noting that it had been very much burned as well, and to Ojihara’s farm.  _

_ Her belly gives a flop as she sets foot onto the useless soil. She stands at the fence post, she can practically see Seukhyun leaning up against it, flashing her one of his smooth, charming smiles.  _

_ She can practically hear him commenting, “I think you might have a chance to out harvest me this year.”  _

_ And she might have had the field and everything in it not been reduced to ash. Nothing grows within the ashes. The house has been reduced to forerally smoldering rubble. At least the left have anyways. But the right side is growing concave as well. She decides to keep her distance should it decide to topple.  _

_ Anyways, she knows what is inside; Ojihara. All alone. His son and granddaughter at her house. And she knows that it is for the best, even knowing that he’d be soon to follow, Ojihara wouldn’t have been able to bare watching his son and granddaughter die. He would have been shamed knowing that he had let it happen.  _

_ She is shamed knowing that she let her husband and sons die.  _

_ She is Azula.  _

_ She should have been more powerful than  _ that _.  _

_ Her hatred reaches a new height. _

_ And it only seems to swell as she grows nearer to her former home.  _

_ She stands before the doorway and she feels nauseous. Absolutely nauseous. Really, she ought to turn back. Dimly she is aware that she is only hurting herself. She thinks that she might be addicted to the suffering. She has been ruminating on it since it had been inflicted upon her.  _

_ She pushes the door open and invites more of it in. When the smell hits her she caves into the nausea. She finds herself on her hands and knees, tears stinging in her eyes. A second wave hits when she realizes that her hands are pressing into dried blood.  _

_ Her own.  _

_ Where it had collected after the soldier had slashed her throat and belly.  _

_ She isn’t certain of how long she does, but she lays there shuddering and fight to control her breathing. She hears a clamor in her head; the rush of fire, the sounds of swords being drawn, of furniture being disarrayed, of screaming… _

_ She shouldn’t do it, but she does.  _

_ Eventually she crawls her way over to Hajime and Atsu.  _

_ The rage she expects to feel amplifies but is swept away all the same by an overwhelming urge to just lay there with them until she withers away. She comes to find that there is only so much that she can take before her mind shuts itself down.  _

_ She finds herself back on the outskirts of town, she doesn’t remember how she got there. There is only a faint hum, a blurry tingle in her mind. A tiredness. A deep loathing. A deeper sorrow.  _

_ She carries herself back to Chin.  _

_ That day she learns that she cannot escape her past no matter how far she runs. No matter how long she runs. It is always there. It will  _ **_always_ ** _ be there. She learns that her mind is so terribly fragile.  _

**.oOo.**

She is itching to say something, he knows that she is. He just isn’t sure what and he isn’t sure that he should ask. Instead he watches her wander about the palace garden. He decides to ask a different question instead, “what are you planting anyways?”

“Turnips.”

“Do you even like turnips?”

She thinks for a moment. “That depends.”

He furrows his brows. Either you like a food or you don’t, at least that has been his experience with it. “What do you mean?” 

“They taste horrid but…” she purses her lips and rubs them together. “But the scent of them is familiar. I like how they smell.” 

Sokka nods, he hadn’t thought of it like that. And then he remembers. He doesn’t say it, but he remembers. He recalls her journal and her mentioning the old man and his turnip farm. “Can I help?” 

Azula hands him a trowel. Truth be told, he hadn’t realized that she even knew the difference between a trowel and a regular shovel. Yet she had used it rather efficiently, smoothing and patting the dirt over the seed she had just planted. 

She only has the one so they take turns planting each seed until Azula is satisfied that they have planted enough. She stands up and half-smacks, half-rubs her hands together until most of the dirt has been cleared of them. 

She seems pleased, perhaps even happy. He smiles too. It seems as though she has found at least one healthy outlet for her pain. She tosses a glance over her shoulder and catches him staring. He flushes. 

At the very least, she pretends like she hadn’t noticed.

**.oOo.**

“I haven’t had a chance to do that in a while.” She notes. She holds her hand in front of her, inspecting her nails. They haven’t been so dirty in months. She can’t imagine that her serving girls are going to be all too pleased. 

Although, it might come as a comfort to them to know that she can respect the sort of work that a palace gardener does.

“Does it make you feel better?” He asks. 

Azula nods, “quite.” 

“That’s good to hear.” 

“Yes.” She nods. “I will have to get my nails cleaned.” 

He laughs, “right away?”

She tilts her head, “preferably, yes.” She now has the opportunity to be perfectly clean after gardening, she doesn’t see the harm in not wasting it. “I like to be clean.” She thinks that Ojihara might have rolled his eyes at that, but she had always had a habit of getting him to do that anyhow. 

She tries to fend off the wave of sadness that comes over her. It is the same one that his been threatening to pull her under all day. She glances at Sokka. “Go ahead. Ask.” She mutters. “I know that you want to…”

He inhales sharply and melodramatically, “what’s bothering you?” 

“I was thinking about Ojihara…” 

“The turnip grandpa?”

Azula roll her eyes, “the turnip grandpa.”

“Okay.” 

“And I have been thinking about how I never got a chance to tell Hajime my real name.”

**.oOo.**

Sokka cringes to himself. Somehow he has been under the impression that she had told him. Though he isn’t quite connecting the dots. “What does that have to do with turnip grandpa?”

She goes quite again for quite a while. “Ojihara used to think that it was...humorous that I didn’t like to get my hands dirty. He didn’t know that I’m…” she gestures to the palace. She looks back at her nails, at the dirt beneath them. “I can just go and clean them at my leisure. Before going to Wujing there was never dirt under my nails. He didn’t know that. Hajime didn’t know that.” She pauses. “Or they might have, but they didn’t know why.”

“And so being able to utilize the spa reminds you of how you never got the chance to tell them where you come from?”

She nods. “I was already thinking about that this morning. And now I am thinking about it more.” 

Sokka nods. “That bothers you?”

“Alot.” She replies. “I don’t think that Hajime would have...loved me if he knew. He said that he would have, but that’s because he didn’t know what he was promising to cherish.” 

“Who.”

“Huh?”

“ _ Who _ he was promising to cherish.”

Azula half smiles. “Regardless of word choice, my point still stands.” 

“I think that he would have.” Sokka declares with a smile of his own. “If he loved you for what you are now then I think that he would have been able to handle hearing about the past. I would have still loved you.” 

**.oOo.**

“You would have?” 

“Sure!” 

She isn’t quite sure why it makes her feel better to know that. Perhaps because he reminds her of Hajime in many ways. Still, she has to ask, “why?” 

Sokka furrows his brows. “What do you mean, why? You’re bold and fun and I’ve never met anyone like you. I bet that Hajime would have felt the same way. And I know your history, part of it anyways, I was there for part of it. I still lo-like you.” He smiles again. 

She clears her throat, “that’s the other thing.” His face is flushing, his slip up is not lost on her but she isn’t ready to address it yet. “I...there’s a part of me that was hoping that he would have fought with me over it.”

He crinkles his brows. “Why would you want that?”

“Because it was so perfect, Sokka. We never fought, not once. I know that if we’d been together long enough that we would have eventually. I wanted to know what that was like. To fight with someone…” She wanted, perhaps still wants, to know what it is like to make up after a fight, to feel that special sort of relief that comes with the end of an argument. “To fight with someone and know that they’d still stick around. Hajime would have.” 

“That actually...it makes a lot of sense.” 

She swallows. “It does?” 

He nods. “It’s reassuring to know that you can get someone  _ so _ mad and they’ll still care about you so much. Like how me and Katara are sometimes. She’s pretty much the worst but she’s also the best?” 

“I thought that I was the worst?” 

“But you’re also the best.” He nudges her. His face grows serious again. “And that’s why I think that you will have that fight one day.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, I’m not exactly good at the words thing and comforting people. Katara says I’m ‘insensitive’.” 

She shrugs. She can’t imagine that he is any more insensitive than she. Really it was a comfort enough just to hear that isn’t strange to have wanted a fight. “You don’t have to say anything. Sometimes I just want someone to listen.”


End file.
